CASE

During the last two decades, the service-oriented industry has seen tremendous growth. Service has registered tremendous growth. Service has become an integral part of modern business. Even companies that deal in tangible products like manufacturing firms now pay attention to aspects of service in their product offering. The focus on quality is due to the intensive competition faced by businesses these days. In the financial services sector, firms offer very similar products and services only distinguishable by brand names. One of the ways in which the financial services firms can distinguish themselves is through the quality of service that they offer. This has a direct impact on their profitability. The quality of service is directly connected with profits, customer expectations and performance of the firm. For the financial services firms, the quality of service offered to customers is key, because of the ability of customers to easily switch to competitors. The service quality model (SERVQUAL) developed by Parasuraman et al (1985) is one of the most famous tools for measuring service quality. Required: Using a standard report format (i.e. Abstract, table of contents, Introduction, main body, summary/conclusion):

Discuss in what ways good service quality can be a source of competitive advantage for a bank. Identify the components of the SERVQUAL model and show how it can be applied by the bank to improve the service quality.

1. Use Times New Roman as font, and 12 as font size.

2. Use 1.5 line spacing.

3. Justify the paragraphs, i.e. blocked left and right.

4. Word count: minimum 1,000 words and maximum 1,500 words.

5. Acknowledge/reference the source of material (i.e. inside text referencing) using APA system of referencing. Failure to do so amounts to plagiarism

. 6. The assignment should have a table of contents, introduction, main body, conclusion and references.

7. State your student number only.

8. Submit in PDF format.

9. Strictly observe submission deadline, as late submissions shall not be graded.

Notes: 1. Submissions via e-mail will not be graded.

2. Submissions with SI above 30 will not attract any marks.

3. Ten marks will be awarded for grammar, spelling, format etc of the report.