An Investigation of Customer’s Perception and Expectation of Services in Pension Fund Administration (Pfa) in Nigeria (a Study of Pfa Customers in Enugu)

The Gaps Model of Service Quality was originally developed for application in the financial service sector. The model was

* The difference between expectations of service for a given organization and perceived quality of delivery by the service provider

Pension Fund is a fund that is accumulated from employees contributions, or employers contributions, or both and hence forth employees benefit from the pension paid from thereafter, upon retirement or termination from duty. In Tanzania, the pension fund is managed by the social security system, under the Social Security Regulatory Authority (SSRA) Act, 2008; aimed at regulating the social security sector and to provide for related matters that might arise. The act applies only for Tanzania Mainland; and in that regard, this paper shall only take the Tanzania Mainland pension schemes into reference.

Perceived service quality as customer-based performances measure is also known as SERVQUAL Model. This study empirically examines organizational barriers to delivering high-quality service performance as measured by customer perceptions and expectations. Using the extended service-quality model developed by Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman (Journal of Marketing, 52, 35-48) as a conceptual framework, five specific propositions implied by the model and by earlier studies contributing to its development were tested. Such testing required a complex research design involving five service companies as well as samples of customers, contact employees, and managers from each company. The results have

Source : Adapted from A. Parasuraman, Valerie Zeithaml, and Leonard Berry, “A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research,” Journal of Marketing, 49 (Fall 1985)

In order to understand service quality and models proposed to assess it, Seth, Deshmukh, & Vrat (2005) conducted a literature review of the service quality models and examined 19 different service quality models. Their paper summarized different models and highlighted the strengthens and weakness of each model. The authors conclude that while none of models were able to address all aspects of measurements and selection of a model to measure service quality would be dependent on the subject that the researcher wished to measure.

These criticisms relates to conceptual, methodological and analytical issues in SERVQUAL. The primary issue raised in the literature is the conceptualization of service quality as the difference between perception and expectation [159]. Cronin and Taylor, reiterate their views against the disconfirmation based SERVQUAL scale of measuring service quality and continued to be proponents of their perception-only approach to service quality measurement. Further, the use of the perception and expectation gap measure of service also raises related analytical concerns about its low reliability, poor discriminant validity and spurious correlations [168-170]. Parasuraman et al.

(Khatri and Ahuja, 2010) stated in their study that it has become imperative for the Public sector as well as Private sector Banks, to perform to the best of their abilities to retain their customers by catering to their needs. If the banks fail to satisfy their customers, it can suffer huge losses. The authors used SERVQUAL model to study various variables of service quality and also compared the public sector and private sector in terms of customer satisfaction. The SERVQUAL model takes into considerations the perceptions of customers of the relative importance of the service attributes. They carried out this in only Delhi, NCR and used a likert scale as follows:

A recurring theme in service companies is the difficulty experienced in translating customer expectations into service quality specifications that employees can understand and execute. The difficulty can be interpreted as three difficulties: the difficulty for managers who are not in direct contact with customers in large organization to understand the customer needs; the difficulty in getting the right balance between imposing service standards and still allowing the staff to be natural; the difficulty managers faces in selecting and

Service quality represents a fundamental aspect of delivery, which strongly influences consumer satisfaction and, as a result, loyalty. In today’s global market a customer’s service expectation has to be met and exceeded eventually in order to retain customers as well as achieve success. Perceived quality of a product or a service is becoming one of the major competitive factors in the business world and has led to the innovation of the ‘Quality Era’ (Peeler, 1996). In simple words, the comparison of customer expectations with service performance is service quality. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is defined as a pleasurable fulfilment response toward a good, service, benefit, or reward (Oliver, 1997). Both of these

The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between customer satisfaction and consumer loyalty and apply its relationship into all the market industries including products and services, particularly in financial institutions. Preliminary sample data (N=80) will be collected from faculties and students at Johnson and Wales University of all ethnicities, national and international students. The hypothesis of the study is developed as H1: There is a significant positive relationship between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. A t-test for independent samples is used to address the hypothesis. The discussion of the study indicated that there is a significant positive relationship between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction, however, it is important to fully understand that the loyalty which is the main goal of each industry is very hard to achieve and is not very easy to be reached by industries due to the customer satisfaction which is very hard to reach by itself, and the service quality as well. There are many other variables that can affect the consumer loyalty such as the high level of competition among today’s companies and the fast track of technological advancement. These reasons indicate that companies should work hard because loyalty is a fleeting issue, today’s loyal customer would not be tomorrow’s loyal customer.

As a student of Masters of Business Administration specialization in general management with the background of Bachelor of Industrial engineering the writer has four years experiences in the automobile industry. These experiences and background help me to understand the role of customer satisfaction in terms of organization profitability.

In managing the business which provides pure services to the customer, company need to ensure that the service delivered is meeting with expectation and satisfied the customer. The quality of services is considered to be a critical success factor for the service companies. Service is close conceptual as well as empirical link to customer satisfaction turned it into the core marketing instrument, making it the most researched area in services marketing (Fisk et al., 1995; Bolton et al., 2000). In addition, the accumulated research has linked positively the service with profitability (Fornell, 1992).

Since the early 1980s customer satisfaction surveys have maintained a conspicuous place in the research agenda (Allen & Rao, 2000). Quality is the core strategy that organizations execute to bring better values to customers for gaining a competitive advantage. Quality is conformance to requirements (Crosby, 1979). However Juran et al. (1974) see quality as fitness for use while according to Kanji (1990) quality is satisfying the customer’s requirement continually. Service quality is the ability of the organization to meet or exceed customer expectations (Kitchroen, 2004). Research diagnose several characteristics those are associated with service quality. Schneider & Bowen (1995) proposed three crucial issues security, esteem and justice

Manfred et al(2006) defines service quality in terms of customers expectation and perception of service provided. Zeithaml(1998) considers service quality