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A Study on the Structural Relationship of Antecedents of Customer Satisfaction and Customer Trust and the Customer Loyalty Formation Process in the Retail Financial Service Industry

Jang, Hyeongyu1 · Jung, Gihan1

1 Gyeongsang National University

Published: January 2007 · Vol. 36, No. 2 · pp. 415-441
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Abstract

The retail financial services industry is a representative service industry sector where continuous innovation and change are occurring, and it faces a business environment in which effective management methods must be adopted and explored even merely for sustained growth or survival itself with the advent of an era of autonomous competition. To cope with the rapidly changing financial environment, financial institutions are striving to break away from past management mindsets and devoting all efforts to securing competitive advantage through diverse and advanced financial management and business management systems. Among such efforts, management philosophies such as quality, value, fairness, satisfaction, trust, and customer loyalty have been emphasized more than ever in recent financial management, which can be attributed to the fact that retail financial services itself constitutes a representative service environment. This study established a structural relationship model of perceived service quality, value, and fairness—as antecedent factors of customer satisfaction and customer trust—and customer loyalty as the outcome factor in the retail financial services environment, and empirically investigated this model. The research results confirmed that close path relationships exist among perceived quality, value, and fairness—the antecedent factors of customer satisfaction and trust—and that highly organic structural relationships also exist among customer satisfaction, customer trust, and customer loyalty. Furthermore, not only direct influence relationships but also indirect influence relationships among the research variables were confirmed. However, the positive relationships between perceived value and customer trust, and between perceived quality and customer satisfaction, were found to be insignificant. Insights and practical implications from the empirical research results are as follows. First, the focus should be placed on strategies that integrate the customer loyalty formation process in retail financial services. It is necessary to understand the relationships among service quality, value, and fairness—which are major antecedent factors of customer satisfaction and customer trust—and to grasp the substantive relational structure of their impact on satisfaction and trust. It should not be overlooked that each variable plays a role in ultimately enhancing customer loyalty not only through direct influence relationships but also through long-term indirect relationships. When the people responsible for each segment of retail financial services cooperate organically in the appropriate and efficient management of the structural factors presented in this study, all variables related to the customer loyalty formation process can be managed and operated interactively from an integrated perspective.
Keywords: 고객만족고객신뢰고객애호도소매금융