CRM Dimensions Affecting Customer Satisfaction in Bangladeshi Banking Industry: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

For the banking sector in Bangladesh, achieving customer-focused business objectives is a critical ingredient for success in order to reign over the increasingly competitive market. This prompted us to illuminate the underlying dimensions of Customer Relationship Management that influence the customer satisfaction. Accordingly, Structural Equation Modeling was employed on a sample size of 210 aiming to identify those factors, explore interdependence amongst them and assess their combined effect on customers’ satisfaction. In this regard, three latent variables were identified, namely customer orientation, customer experience and service process. The result signifies that among the chosen three factors, customer orientation and customer experience are proven to have significant impact on each other and on customer satisfaction concertedly while the other factor- service process has been proven statistically insignificant. The research findings provide empirical support for the conjecture that CRM dimensions pave the way for the firms towards improving customer satisfaction. Besides, our research contributes to empirically valid theory by synthesizing insights from the marketing and information systems literature and by investigating the effect of organizational variables that leverage CRM investments. The implications of the findings on the part of the banking industries and directions for future research are also put forward. Keywords: Bangladesh, Customer Relationship Management, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Orientation, Customer Experience, Service Process

Paradigm shift or business as usual? Workers' views on multi-stakeholder initiatives in Bangladesh

The scale of the tragedy at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, in which more than 1,000 garment factory workers died when the building collapsed in April 2013, galvanized a range of stakeholders to take action to prevent future disasters and to acknowledge that business as usual was not an option. Prominent in these efforts were the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (hereafter the Accord) and the Alliance for Bangladesh Workers’ Safety (hereafter the Alliance), two multi‐stakeholder agreements that brought global buyers together in a coordinated effort to improve health and safety conditions in the ready‐made garment industry. These agreements represented a move away from the buyer‐driven, compliance‐based model, which hitherto dominated corporate social responsibility initiatives, to a new cooperation‐based approach. The Accord in particular, which included global union federations and their local union partners as signatories and held global firms legally accountable, was described as a ‘paradigm shift’ with the potential to improve industrial democracy in Bangladesh. This article is concerned with the experiences and perceptions of workers in the Bangladesh garment industry regarding these new initiatives. It uses a purposively designed survey to explore the extent to which these initiatives brought about improvements in wages and working conditions in the garment industry, to identify where change was slowest or absent and to ask whether the initiatives did indeed represent a paradigm shift in efforts to enforce the rights of workers

Exploring the context in which different close-to-community sexual and reproductive health service providers operate in Bangladesh: a qualitative study

Background A range of formal and informal close-to-community (CTC) health service providers operate in an increasingly urbanized Bangladesh. Informal CTC health service providers play a key role in Bangladesh’s pluralistic health system, yet the reasons for their popularity and their interactions with formal providers and the community are poorly understood. This paper aims to understand the factors shaping poor urban and rural women’s choice of service provider for their sexual and reproductive health (SRH)-related problems and the interrelationships between these providers and communities. Building this evidence base is important, as the number and range of CTC providers continue to expand in both urban slums and rural communities in Bangladesh. This has implications for policy and future programme interventions addressing the poor women’s SRH needs. Methods Data was generated through 24 in-depth interviews with menstrual regulation clients, 12 focus group discussions with married men and women in communities and 24 semi-structured interviews with formal and informal CTC SRH service providers. Data was collected between July and September 2013 from three urban slums and one rural site in Dhaka and Sylhet, Bangladesh. Atlas.ti software was used to manage data analysis and coding, and a thematic analysis was undertaken. Results Poor women living in urban slums and rural areas visit a diverse range of CTC providers for SRH-related problems. Key factors influencing their choice of provider include the following: availability, accessibility, expenses and perceived quality of care, the latter being shaped by notions of trust, respect and familiarity. Informal providers are usually the first point of contact even for those clients who subsequently access SRH services from formal providers. Despite existing informal interactions between both types of providers and a shared understanding that this can be beneficial for clients, there is no effective link or partnership between these providers for referral, coordination and communication regarding SRH services. Conclusion Training informal CTC providers and developing strategies to enable better links and coordination between this community-embedded cadre and the formal health sector has the potential to reduce service cost and improve availability of quality SRH (and other) care at the community level

Mediation of coffee-induced improvements in human vascular function by chlorogenic acids and its metabolites: two randomized, controlled, crossover intervention trials

Background & aims Polyphenol intake has been linked to improvements in human vascular function, although data on hydroxycinnamates, such as chlorogenic acid (CGA) have not yet been studied. We aimed to investigate the impact of coffee intake rich in chlorogenic acid on human vascular function and whether CGAs are involved in potential effects. Methods Two acute randomized, controlled, cross-over human intervention trials were conducted. The impact of coffee intake, matched for caffeine but differing in CGA content (89, and 310 mg) on flow-mediated dilation (FMD) was assessed in 15 healthy male subjects. In a second intervention trial conducted with 24 healthy male subjects, the impact of pure 5-caffeoylquinic acid (5-CQA), the main CGA in coffee (5-CQA; 450 mg and 900 mg) on FMD was also investigated. Results We observed a bi-phasic FMD response after low and high polyphenol, (89 mg and 310 mg CGA) intake, with increases at 1 (1.10 ± 0.43% and 1.34 ± 0.62%, respectively) and 5 (0.79% ± 0.32 and 1.52% ± 0.40, respectively) hours post coffee consumption. FMD responses to coffee intake was closely paralleled by the appearance of CGA metabolites in plasma, notably 3-, 4- and 5-CQA and ferulic-4′-O-sulfate at 1 h and isoferulic-4′-O-glucuronide and ferulic-4′-O-sulfate at 5 h. Intervention with purified 5-CQA (450 mg) also led to an improvement in FMD response relative to control (0.75 ± 1.31% at 1 h post intervention, p = 0.06) and concomitant appearance of plasma metabolites. Conclusions Coffee intake acutely improves human vascular function, an effect, in part, mediated by 5-CQA and its physiological metabolites

How reliable is the asset score in measuring socioeconomic status? Comparing asset ownership reported by male and female heads of households

Asset scores are widely used as the preferred method of measuring socioeconomic wellbeing of households in developing countries. We examine the degree of discrepancies in reporting asset ownership by male and female heads of the same household. Household asset scores were estimated separately for male and female responses, using Principal Component Analysis, the method widely used in the literature, and households were categorized into wealth quintiles. The results indicate that only half of the households belonged to the same quintile groups for both male and female response-based asset scores. In addition, the two estimates of asset scores within the same quintile deviate by more than 20% for 71% of households in the top three quintiles and for 18% in the poorest two quintiles. Inter-individual (male/female) variability in reporting the asset ownership was high enough to raise concerns about the validity and reliability of asset scores as a metric of household socioeconomic status. Although the study did not try to ascertain underlying reasons for differential reporting, possible explanations could be a lack of awareness among household members on asset ownership or differential propensity to demonstrate relatively better social status of the household by male and female respondents. To improve reliability of asset scores, methodology for collecting asset ownership information should define who in the household may or may not be used as a respondent. Visual verification of reported ownership of assets will reduce male-female discrepancies but the verification process is time-consuming and intrusive, thus negating the advantages of collecting asset data. Alternatives to asset-based scoring need to be considered and one approach could be to solicit subjective opinions from male and female heads on the location of households in the social hierarchy

Determining the function of zebrafish epithalamic asymmetry

As in many fishes, amphibians and reptiles, the epithalamus of the zebrafish, Danio rerio, develops with pronounced left–right (L–R) asymmetry. For example, in more than 95 per cent of zebrafish larvae, the parapineal, an accessory to the pineal organ, forms on the left side of the brain and the adjacent left habenular nucleus is larger than the right. Disruption of Nodal signalling affects this bias, producing equal numbers of larvae with the parapineal on the left or the right side and corresponding habenular reversals. Pre-selection of live larvae using fluorescent transgenic reporters provides a useful substrate for studying the effects of neuroanatomical asymmetry on behaviour. Previous studies had suggested that epithalamic directionality is correlated with lateralized behaviours such as L–R eye preference. We find that the randomization of epithalamic asymmetry, through perturbation of the nodal-related gene southpaw, does not alter a variety of motor behaviours, including responses to lateralized stimuli. However, we discovered significant deficits in swimming initiation and in the total distance navigated by larvae with parapineal reversals. We discuss these findings with respect to previous studies and recent work linking the habenular region with control of the motivation/reward pathway of the vertebrate brain