What Drives Customer Loyalty and Profitability?

Customer loyalty as an applied concept is a critical strategic option in today''s competitve environment. Managers and researchers have therefore increased their study and understanding of the concept as a strategic marketing imperative to capture market share and improve profitability. The theoretical perspective is that service quality, competitive pricing as well as company image and reputation contribute to customer satisfaction and that service quality along a number of pathways drives customer loyalty and profitability of the firm. We investigated empirically the relative importance of these factors in driving customer loyalty and profitability by analysing perspectives of retail customers of Ghana''s banking Industry. Our study reveals among others that whilst service quality and bank image and reputation are important drivers of customer satisfaction and loyalty, competitive pricing showed weak linear relationship with customer satisfaction and loyalty. Finally, we discussed the management implications of our study. This book should be especially useful to academics, students as well as marketing and strategy professionals.