Title: Customers' Perception towards Stock Broking Services: An Empirical Study
Abstract: Introduction :In the present competitive environment it is very crucial to every business firm to ensure satisfaction to its customers. According to one survey it was found that it costs five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer. So one can say that it is very important to provide goods and services that satisfy customers' needs or wants irrespective of the industry or scale of the business in which a firm is operating.The basic objective of any financial services company would be to provide absolute tailor- made products and services to the customer and to retain them with the organization. Retention, however, is not that easy because customer expectations change over time and it becomes a tough job for the companies to satisfy the needs of their customers. With asset management getting its pace and a lot of companies emerging as players, this study has been undertaken with regard to Stock Broking Agencies to look into the expectation of the customers regarding shares and other issues. This research gives emphasis to the expectations of the customers of broking firms and tries to study the performance of the firms visa-vis those expectations.In a climate of decreasing brand loyalties, understanding customer service and measuring customer satisfaction are very crucial. There is obviously a strong link between customer satisfaction and customer retention. Customers' perception of service and its quality will determine the success of the product or service in the market. Customer satisfaction is still one of the strongest predictors of customer retention. It is considerably more expensive to attract new customers than it is to keep old ones happy.Review of Literature:Customer satisfaction is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company can meet the customer's expectations. With better understanding of customers' perceptions, companies can determine the actions required to meet the customers' needs. They can identify their own strengths and weaknesses in comparison to those of their competitors, and thereby chart out a path for future progress. Customer satisfaction measurement helps to promote an increased focus on customer outcomes and stimulate improvements in the work practices and processes used within the company.Customer satisfaction is an important theoretical as well as practical issue for the marketers and consumer researchers (Fournier and Mick, 1999; Meuter et.al., 2000). Customer satisfaction can be considered as the essence of success in today's highly competitive world of business. The importance that customers place on service quality attributes is the driver of satisfaction. Loyalty is a crucial output to a firm's resource allocation strategy and quality improvement efforts.Service quality is particularly essential in the context of financial services, because providers tend to be viewed as relatively undifferentiated, and hence service becomes a key to competitive advantage (Almossawi, B., 2001; Stafford, 1996) . Moreover, financial sendees, like other services, are intangible, difficult to evaluate, and rest on experience and credence quality (Zeithaml, 1981;Zeithamletal., 1985).The retail stock brokerage sector has been the most radically transformed of the financial services industries, principally by the emergence of low price on-line securities trading and free financial information services (Kalakota and Frei 1997) .A study by Kauffman et al. carried out in 2000 indicated that, due to the intensive essence of information, most traditional form of stock trading market players will eventually move towards leveraging IT in order to operate their businesses in Internet-based trading. This in turn brings about many potential benefits for the users, i.e. the investors, such as faster trading speed, better information transparency, and much lower operating cost (C. J. George 2000).Many researchers have proposed a virtuous chain of effects from improved customer satisfaction to profit. …
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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