Investigating Structural Relationship Between Service Quality, Satisfaction and Loyalty in Banking Sector of Afghanistan

This study aims to understand the relationship of service quality dimensions, customer satisfaction, and loyalty in the banking sector using data from the Afghanistan banking sector. The study surveyed 269 respondents using a standard SERVQUAL questionnaire to examine the relationship between service quality dimensions, customer satisfaction, and loyalty in the banking sector of Afghanistan. The Structural Equation Modeling approached was used to analyze data. The findings suggest that assurance, empathy, and tangibles have a positive influence on customer satisfaction. Importantly, results revealed that female customers are less satisfied as compared to their counterparts. furthermore, the findings indicate a positive influence of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty. This paper offers empirical support for bank managers to enhance the physical facilities, assure customer trust, appropriately treat customers and consider gender requirements in providing banking services. The major limitation of this study is that it only includes one private bank customer and only Kabul province. This work illustrates an initial empirical study into service quality, customer satisfaction, and loyalty in Afghanistan using well developed SERVQUAL model.