THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SERVICE QUALITY, CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY: AN INVESTIGATION IN VIETNAMESE RETAIL BANKING SECTOR

This paper develops and empirically tests the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in a retail banking context. A research model about the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is developed. Based on this model, a survey is conducted with retail banking customers, with and 261 valid respondents. The hypotheses are then proposed and tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling technique (SME). The analysis reveals that service quality and customer satisfaction are important antecedents of customer loyalty and customer satisfaction mediates the effects of service quality on customer loyalty. These findings suggest the non-linearity relationships between three constructs and emphasize the need of treating customer loyalty management as the process which includes plenty of factors interactions to each other.