The Relationship Between Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction in the Telecommunication Industry: Evidence from Nigeria

the telecommunication industry with a focus on Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN)

Nigeria. A total of 230 respondents participated in the study. Research questions and objectives

were set, alongside the hypotheses that were formulated and tested. Descriptive statistics

comprising the simple percentage and tables were used for data presentation and analysis.

Regression analysis and Pearson product moment correlation coefficient were employed in testing

our hypotheses. The study reveals that service quality has effect on customer satisfaction and that

there is a positive relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction. The researcher

concluded by recommending that organisations should focus more attention on service quality,

because of its effects on customer satisfaction. To ensure that customer satisfaction level is high,

organisation must first of all know the expectations of the customers and how they can meet such

expectations. Customer satisfaction helps in customer loyalty and retention. It has been discovered

that it costs to attract new customer than to retain existing ones. It is also recommended that

organisations should welcome suggestions from customers and more programmes should be

designed to measure service quality and customer satisfaction.

Keywords: Customer, Service, Customer Satisfaction, Service Quality, Customer Loyalty.

1. Introduction

Service quality today has become not only the rhetoric of every business enterprise, but also

occupies eminent position in every discourse. No business organisation can survive without

building its customer satisfaction and brand loyalty; likewise no organisation can make a healthy

living without meeting the needs of its customers. That is what organisations do: they serve people's

needs. Service quality helps in cementing the relationship between customers and the organisation

and it is a two-way flow of value. This means that customer derives real value from the relationship

which translate into value for the organisation in the form of enhanced profitability and

sustainability over a long period of time.

A number of empirical studies have been conducted on the subject of service quality and

customer satisfaction (Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Spreng and Mackoy, 1996; Jones and Suh, 2000;

Coyles and Gokey, 2002; Ranaweera and Prabhu, 2003; Choi et al., 2004). Research on this subject

shows that most of the studies were conducted in industrialised countries such as United State, the

United Kingdom, and Japan. This implies that there is dearth of relevant literature on

underdeveloped and developing countries, including Nigeria which has to be covered by research.

In addition, despite the existence of these studies, very little attention has been given to the

communication industry. This means that the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction in

the communication industry has not received adequate research attention in Nigeria. Thus, there is a

major gap in the relevant literature on Nigeria, which has to be covered by research. This research

attempts to fill this gap by studying the situation of the Nigerian telecommunication industry and

providing more empirical evidence on the effects of service quality on customer satisfaction. It is

BRAND. Broad Research in Accounting, Negotiation, and Distribution

ISSN 2067-8177, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2010

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against this backdrop that this study tries to answer three major research questions: (i) Does

customer service have a relationship with service quality perception? (ii) Does customer service

have a relationship with customer satisfaction? (iii) Does customer satisfaction have a relationship

with service quality perception? In order to address the above questions, we work on these

objectives: (i) to determine the relationship between customer service and perceived service quality.

(ii) to determine the relationship between customer service and customer satisfaction. (iii) to

determine the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction. (iv) to investigate the

strategies utilised by an organisation to deliver exceptional service quality and customer satisfaction

through customer service. In addition, three hypotheses were formulated to guide the researcher in

the conduct of this study. They are: (i) H1: Customer service has effect on quality perception. (ii) H1:

Customer service has effect on customer satisfaction. (iii) H1: There is a relationship between

customer satisfaction and quality perception.

2. Review of Literature

This section dwells on the theoretical and systematic analysis of documents containing

information about the research problem on customer service. It is the relation of the existing

literature on the research topic to the study and thus defines the boundary of this article.

2.1 Service quality

The definition of quality may vary from person to person