Service Quality and Customer Loyalty: A Study in Telecom Sector
Author : Mubashir Majid Baba and Ruku MajeedVolume 7 No.1 January-June 2018 pp 60-66
Abstract
The objective of this paper is to study the impact of service quality gaps with customer loyalty in the Indian telecom sector. Service quality gaps has been considered as independent variable whereas customer loyalty was considered as dependent variable. Five antecedents of service quality gaps have been considered in this study viz. reliabilty, assurance, tangibility, empathy and responsiveness based on SERVQUAL model as given by Parsuraman, Zeithaml and Berry(1988). A survey-based exploratory and causal research design was used. A 27 items instrument was generated comprising of 22 items for the five antecedents of independent variables on the basis of the work of Parsuraman, Zeithaml and Berry(1988), and 5 items for customer loyalty on the basis of the work of Kaur and Soch (2012). The data was collected from 163 customers using mobile service of two telecom operators of J&K (BSNL and Airtel) through structured questionnaires. Cronbach’s coefficient alpha was used to determine the reliability of the instrument. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the causal relationship between both the independent & dependent variable. Results depicted that the service quality gaps has significant and positive impact on customer loyalty. The study suggests that the service providers should put their endeavor to upgrade the technology and serve the customers with modern equipments.
Keywords
Service quality, Customer loyalty, Telecommunication, Customer’s perception, Service expectation
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