Relationship Marketing and Customer Retention in the Ghanaian Banking Industry

The Ghanaian banking industry has experienced a heightened level of competition in recent times due to the recent banking sector clean-up by the Bank of Ghana (BOG) which has resulted in a number of mergers, acquisitions and bank closures. As a result of this development, banks in Ghana have adopted relationship marketing (RM) as a strategy to attract new customers and for customer retention purposes. This research seeks to investigate the impact of relationship marketing (RM) on customer retention in the Ghanaian banking industry. It also examined the impact of relationship marketing (RM) on customer satisfaction as well as the impact of customer satisfaction on customer retention in the Ghanaian banking industry. A survey of customers from twenty banks was conducted using a questionnaire. The results revealed that relationship marketing account for a significant variation in the extent of customer retention in the Ghanaian banking industry. The study further revealed that customer satisfaction also accounts for the level of customer retention in the Ghanaian banking sector. The study also discovered that banks in Ghana are able to retain their customers even without employing non-financial benefits, which is considered as very essential in the implementation of RM practices. This indicates that banks in Ghana which employ non-financial benefits in addition to financial benefits could have a competitive urge over other competitors in the Ghanaian banking industry. As a consequence, there is a call on Ghanaian banks to implement effective relationship marketing strategies in order to ensure the retention of their customers. Furthermore, banks should employ strategies that will ensure that their customers are satisfied in order to guarantee higher level of retention of their customers Keywords: Relationship Marketing, Customer Retention, Banking, Ghana. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-29-01 Publication date:October 31st 202

Service Quality and Business Students Satisfaction in Private Ghanaian Universities. The Moderating Role of Brand Positioning

Higher educational institutions face increasing competition from local and international education providers. In view of this development, most higher educational institutions focus on service quality delivery in attracting and retaining students. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction and to ascertain the moderating role of brand positioning in the relationship between service quality and customer (student) satisfaction. The study adopted a quantitative approach using self-administered questionnaires to collect data from the respondents and a moderated hierarchical regression model was performed to assess the statistical interdependencies between the service quality measures and student satisfaction.  The results revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between service quality and student satisfaction in Private Ghanaian Universities. The results indicate however, that brand positioning was not statistically significant in the relationship between service quality and student satisfaction as only one path was supported, which suggests that brand positioning moderates only the relationship between empathy and student satisfaction. Based on these findings, it is recommended that private universities must adopt measures to enhance on the delivery of service quality since it plays a major role in determining the satisfaction of students. One limitation is related to the scope of the study which is limited to the education industry, specifically private tertiary education industry in Ghana. Despite these limitations, the study offers practical recommendations on how private tertiary educational institutions can continue to improve on the level of student satisfaction in order to ensure their survival and profitability. Keywords: Service Quality, Brand Positiong, Student Satisfaction, Private Universities DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/74-04 Publication date: December 31st 202