Abstract

The role of service quality is now widely acknowledged as an indicator of customer satisfaction and organizational performance. This work sought to assess the service quality of Easy Rent and its impact on customer satisfaction. More specifically the study sets out to primarily examine customer’s perception of service quality in Easy Rent. Secondly, to examine the level of customer satisfaction regarding the quality of Easy Rent’s services. Thirdly to assess the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction and finally to assess the challenges facing Easy Rent’s customers. This work adopted the exploratory research design and a multistage sampling techniques including stratified and simple random sampling technique to select 200 respondents. This study made use of primary and secondary data which was collected with the use of a well-structured questionnaire, inputted on SPSS version 20.0 and analyzed by making use of simple descriptive statistics through tables and charts and inferential statistics by testing the hypothesis through regression analysis. Findings showed that, the majority (85.8%) of the respondents have a positive perception as regard service quality in Easy Rent. Results also revealed that, the majority (83.82%) of the respondents are satisfied with the services render by Easy Rent. Findings equally indicated that, the challenges facing Easy Rent’s customers include; rapid dilapidation of houses (63%), fake house agents (94%), high priced houses (98%), lack of technology (54%), and low income levels of customer (82.5%) and strike actions (92.5%). Finally the findings from specific objective four showed that the Pseudo R2 values i.e. the Cox and Snell (0.777), Nagelkerke (0.882) and McFadden (0.705) indicated that most to all of the variations (70.5% to 88. 2%) observed in customer satisfaction can be attributed to the combine effect of service tangibility, reliability, assurance, responsiveness and empathy, therefore accepting the alternative hypothesis that service quality has a statistically significant effect on customer’s satisfaction. The study therefore recommended amongst other things that the company should improve service tangibility since it has the lowest impact on customer satisfaction. Future studies could be directed to investigate whether determinants of service quality in Real Estate agency apply to other Real Estate sectors like property valuation.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

The role of service quality is now widely acknowledged as an indicator of customer satisfaction and organizational performance. There are two different conceptualizations in the service quality literature. As interpreted by Brady and Cronin (2001), the first is from the Nordic perspective, which was developed by Grönroos (1984), who found that the dimensions of service quality in global terms consist of functional and technical quality.  Technical quality concentrates on the outcome from the respective service through the interactions with the service provider in satisfying the customer’s basic needs, which shows the „what‟ factor (Grönroos, 1984, 1998). Whereas, the functional quality relates to the process dimension, which evaluates the method of delivery of the particular service from the service provider and it refers to the „how‟ factor (Grönroos, 1984, 1998). Later, the service quality model was modified to include a third dimension, namely image (Akhtar, 2011; Rahman, Khan & Haque, 2012).  The second perspective on service quality originated from Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1988) and is called the American perspective (Sayed, 2013). Brady and Cronin (2001) highlighted that Parasuraman et al. (1988) had used terms that describe service encounter attributes such as reliability, responsiveness, empathy, assurance, and tangibles (Brady & Cronin, 2001; Sayed, 2013). Parasuraman et al. (1988) developed the theory of expectation and perception of service quality by coming up with the Gaps Model of Service Quality. They defined the concept by explaining that the Gaps model focuses on the discrepancy between customers‟ expectation and perception (Parasuraman et al., 1985). The original model contained ten dimensions of service quality. These ten dimensions were subsequently limited to five, and the tool became known as SERVQUAL measurement.

The importance of customers to the business process cannot be overemphasized. This is the reason why companies continuously seek to know more about their customers and what satisfies them. It is an undisputable fact that the success of all businesses lies in the hands of their customers. How well the company meets or exceeds expectations is in an attempt to satisfy them, the reason why marketers around the globe come up with slogans such as “the customer is king” “the customer is always right” and many more. All these slogans are in an attempt to grasp how vital satisfying a customer is to a business. This is because customer satisfaction leads to loyalty and retention which intend leads to increased sales and profitability which is the highest objective of all companies. There exist two conceptualizations of customer satisfaction; transaction-specific and cumulative (Boulding et al., 1993; Andreassen, 2000). Following the transaction-specific concept, customer satisfaction is recognized as a post-choice evaluation judgment of a specific purchase occasion (Oliver, 1980 ) until the present date, researchers have developed a superb body of literature concentrating on this antecedents and consequences of this type of customer satisfaction at the individual level (Yi, 1990). Cumulative customer satisfaction is an overall evaluation based on the total purchase and consumption experiences with a product or service over time. (Fornell, 1992, Johnson & Fornell 1991) This is more fundamental and useful than transaction specificity customer satisfaction in predicting customer subsequent behavior and firm’s past, present and future performances. It is the cumulative customer satisfaction that motivates a firm’s investment in customer satisfaction.

The Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O) of Cisco Systems, John Chambers once said: “Make your customers the center of your culture.” Customers from various cultural backgrounds are habitual to their standards of service quality; therefore, it is essential to look at the service cultures in each country and from which real estate operators can determine what clients from each culture expect from their services.  Investigating each culture in detail helps real estate agents with the application of culture in their customizable service designs (Patterson & Mattila, 2008). Service quality is looked upon from its different dimensions which are tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy.

Tangible aspects of properties have the most impact on customer evaluation of service quality in most countries (Lau et al., 2005). Guests from the United States identify assurance dimension as important, while Japanese identify empathy as an important dimension whereas Chinese identify reliability as another important service quality attribute most important to them( Hsieh & Tsai 2009 )

Customer satisfaction attributes range differently depending on the setting of the study.  There are a few key attributes that Real Estate customers point out as the most important aspects when evaluating customer satisfaction such as Cleanliness of rooms and employee factors. In the United States, customers are more concerned about employee-related factors such as friendliness of staff, customization of service, the ability of hotel employees to cater to customers’ needs, timeliness of employees, and the ability to solve problems efficiently and promptly. In China, customers are more concerned with room related aspects such as cleanliness of the room, the comfort level of beds, and efficiency of housekeeping. Customers from the United States, Japan, and Taiwan appraise employee factors as follows; the Americans choose employees’ ability to solve problems and offering of proper service as the most important factor, Whereas Japanese consider employees’ capacity to solve problems swiftly and efficiently as the most crucial attribute. Taiwanese guests considered employee attentiveness to customers’ needs as the most critical attribute (Kuo 2007). Therefore, it was evident that the cultural backgrounds have an impact on customer satisfaction evaluation process. Although literature provided important findings, the need for culture-specific measurements still exist.

Looking at the aspect of service quality and customer satisfaction from the African perspective, it varies across the different cultures. Southern Africans think it is all about first-class services, as opposed to Northern Africans who think it is about the convenience of the service, whereas for most Cameroonians, it is the very high prices which makes a good or service to be of high quality and satisfy customers. This, in a nutshell, implies quality and satisfaction is subjective and varies across different people and cultures. Although other factors such as product, price, place, and promotion (4 Ps of marketing), other than service quality exist which can equally determine customer satisfaction, (Wilson et al. 2008) this work places more emphasis on service quality. This is because service quality, without doubt, has been proven to be amongst the best determinant of customer satisfaction when it comes to the service sector making it a vital topic for this study.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

In the past, the town dwellers of Buea and students, in particular, have had to move around for days and even weeks or more in search of houses for rent. A few of them are lucky to find the right homes which meet their requirements. But the lot end up in houses that they don’t like just because they could not find the right home maybe as a result of time constraint or ignorance about the location of dwellings that could meet their requirements or even because of deception by some house agents. All these make customers very dissatisfied. Customer satisfaction over the years has become an essential aspect of the business world. This is because customer satisfaction generates increased sales, customer retention and loyalty in the long run. This concept is particularly delicate to service companies because they evaluate their performance via customer perception of their services unlike companies offering tangible products whose performance can be assessed through increased sale of goods. If manufacturing goods of high quality lead to customer satisfaction, is it safe to assume that high service quality equally improves customer satisfaction in service providing companies? This work, therefore, sets out to assess the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction in a service company.

1.3 Objectives Of The Study

1.3.1 Main Research Objective

The primary objective of this study is to assess service quality and its on customer satisfaction in Easy Rent.

1.3.2 Specific research Objectives

1. To assess customer’s perception of service quality in Easy Rent
2. To assess the level of customer satisfaction regarding the quality of Easy Rent’s services
3. To assess the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction
4. To assess the challenges facing Easy Rent’s customers.