Banking Service in Developing Economies

Whilst the relationship marketing literature is expanding at a rather exponential rate, rapport between customers and front line employees did not get its due attention especially in the context of banking service in traditional, developing economies. This has delimited the efficacy of the established relationship theories in explaining the antecedent effect of trust, commitment, service quality and involvement for developing rapport leading to overall client (customer) satisfaction. The focus of this research, thus, is rapport. This chapter acts as a preamble that sets the ball rolling by presenting the research background; explaining the research problem and scope; and discussing the research questions. A brief note explaining the overall organisation of the thesis is also incorporated at the end of this chapter.

In today’s highly competitive business environment, many organizations all over the world have been forced to put more emphasis on retaining their existing customers rather than acquiring new ones. Since conventional transactional approaches to marketing does not seem to be adequate in attaining this and other related marketing goals, many organizations seem to have been moving away from product or brand orientation to relationship marketing orientation which has been viewed as a bridge through which both customers and companies can share each other’s needs and values and can meet their potential expectations by creating two-way exchanges (Bateman and Snell, 2007). In this backdrop, rapport holds a crucial position in the customer-employee relationship arena particularly in marketing of services because it possess characteristics such as interpersonal focus, simultaneous production-consumption and the lack of standa...

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...the conceptual model used in the investigation. It also includes a section to discuss four models found in the extant literature which have been replicated in this study to test if the relationships portrayed in them were valid in the Bangladesh context. This was necessary to ensure the validity of the relationships proposed in the conceptual model.

Chapter 4: Research Design – Presents details of methodology, sampling procedure, data collection process and discussions on the development of the survey instrument.

Chapter 5: Data Analysis – Explains data analysis and research results.

Chapter 6: Hypothesis Testing – Presents a detailed discussion on the hypotheses testing procedures and test results.

Chapter 7: Conclusion – Explains research contributions of this study for both academics as well as practitioners. Also presents the limitations of the study.