Service quality in bank during an economic crisis

The purpose of this paper is to address the aftermath of the crisis that has plagued the Spanish financial sector from a microeconomic and emotional perspective associated to financial entities’ relationships with their customers.

The authors build a model of effects with structural equation modelling based on the quality of the relationship between financial entities and their customers. The authors identify the different dimensions of quality in the entity’s service provision (tangible quality, functional quality and staff quality) as essential antecedents of the different dimensions of relationship quality (satisfaction, trust and loyalty). Moreover, the authors develop a multi-group analysis to test the moderator effect of age in the proposed model.

The work shows that bank customers have been eminently results driven focusing on functional quality which is a determinant cause of customer satisfaction and trust.

Furthermore the authors consider that the dimensions of service quality are interrelated. Functional quality represents an essential quality in customer service, whereas tangible and personnel qualities act to reinforce functional quality. In turn, qualities based on tangible aspects have positive effects on qualities based on intangible aspects.

Moreover, the results confirm the consideration of related variables to conform the construct of relationship quality: satisfaction, trust and loyalty. Finally, age has been found to have a considerable effect as a moderating variable in the relations.

These results represent a significant change in traditional patterns of bank customer behaviour, and fit in with postulates of a new approach based on individual differences in attitudes, with relevant practical implications.