Service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty towards JKR Malaysia

Abstract

The aim of this research was to examining the relationship between JKR service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The significance of this research is intended to help JKR Malaysia to establish the service offered and identified what are the important aspects of training needed by employee in satisfying and keeping the customer loyalty. All questionnaires were base on walk in interview. 106 samples were collected from different departments in various ministries and agencies all over Malaysia. Cronbach’s Alpha test was carried out to test the reliability of each construct. Then Paired t-test test was carried out to compare the means of expectations and perceptions of SERVQUAL dimensions to see whether or not there are significance difference between customer expectation and customer perception. Regressions Test was used to test the effect of Customer Satisfaction on Customer Loyalty. In addition to that, Hierarchical Regression Model test was used to test the mediating effect of customer satisfaction on the relationship between service quality and customerr loyalty. Finally, One Way Anova test was used to find out what are the demographic aspect that impact Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. Overall findings from this study suggest there were significant relationship in between Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. The findings also suggest that there were discrepancies in customer expectation and customer perception from within the dimensions of Service Quality. Specifically, there was significant relationship between satisfaction and service quality. The regression test also found that there was a positive direction, moderate relationship and significant relationship in between customer satisfaction on customer loyalty. Further test using hierarchical regression has found out, customer satisfaction has mediates the relationship of service quality towards customer loyalty. In conclusion, the results suggest JKR Malaysia to focus more effort in improving their service quality especially on the aspect of reliability. Based on the test result, reliability has not only proven to be the most important dimension in customer expectation, it was also found that reliability have the biggest gap of customer perception. Because of the limitation of the resources, the study’s scope has limited to study particularly in the areas of service quality offered by JKR Malaysia with the absence of technical quality. Therefore the study might not reflect the technical quality or functional quality that JKR Malaysia has also offered which might also influence the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in other context. For future research, it would be beneficial if users could be categorized into various segments based on the individual SERVQUAL scores. These segments could then be analyzed by the relative importance of the five dimensions in influencing service quality. In this manner, JKR Malaysia would be able to target specific quality programs of these segments and monitor the success or failure of the program by surveying these respondents again.