ABSTRACT Service quality is a measure of the degree to which the service delivered matches with customer expectations (Lewis & Booms, 1983). Delivering quality service means conforming to customer expectations on a consistent basis. The customer’s perception of quality of service is based on the degree of concordance between expectations and experience. Firms need to offer superior service and to exceed customer expectations to delight the customers (Parasuraman, 1995). Customers will remain loyal to a service organization if the value of what they receive is determined to be relatively greater than that expected from competitors (Zeithaml & Bitner, 1996). While service quality has proved to be an essential ingredient to convince customers to choose one service organization over another; many organizations have realized that maintaining excellence on a consistent basis is imperative if they are to gain customer loyalty. Despite extensive research on the dimensions of service quality in banking sector in developed economies using the SERVQUAL model developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry (1988), little has been done in developing countries and in particular in Nigeria. The SERVQUAL instrument is a concise multiple-item scale with good reliability (Lewis & Mitchell, 1990) and has been widely accepted as a valid instrument (Carman, 1990) in the measurement of perceived service quality. It comprises of five service quality dimensions: reliability, tangibility, assurance, responsiveness and empathy. Extant literature reviewed revealed several gap in study which this study intends to fill from the likely recommendations. Karunaratna (2014), Keshavarz and Jamshidi (2016) all investigated the influence of service quality on customer loyalty in commercial banking in Nigeria using the SERVQUAL model. The purpose of the study is to assess the impact of service quality on xi customer loyalty in commercial banking in Nigeria. A major gap identified in their study is the period which may be considered outdated in relation to current realties. In India, Dubey and Srivastava (2016) carried out a research on the impact of service quality on customer loyalty- a study on telecom sector in India using the SERVQUAL model. Five antecedents of service quality have been considered in this study viz. empathy, assurance, responsiveness, tangibility and reliability based on SERVQUAL model of Persuraman et al (1988). A survey-based exploratory and causal research design was used. A 29 items instrument was generated comprising of 18 items for the four antecedents of independent variables on the basis of the work of Persuraman et al (1988), 6 items for customer relationship management on the basis of the work of Sin, Tse and Yim (2005) and 5 items for customer loyalty on the basis of the work of Kaur and Soch (2012). The data was collected from 262 customers using mobile service of various telecom operators of India through structured questionnaires distributed online. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the causal relationship between both the independent & dependent variables. Results depicted that the service quality has significant and positive impact on customer relationship management and customer loyalty. Out of the four antecedents of service quality, tangibility and assurance has significant and positive impact on customer relationship management, while tangibility has a significant impact on customer loyalty. This also presents another gap as in the current study intends to make use of customers of deposits money banks in Nigeria. Hence, this study intends to contribute to the existing studies by examining a more recent period (2018), using the same variables but in a different sector (banking sector) as well as make use of a more appropriate statistical tools (multiple regression technique and descriptive statistical tools).
