He has been teaching management courses for 8 years in Tourism Department and recently published several articles in different journals; for example, in journal of small business managment, total quality managment and business excellence journal, tourism management journal, services marketing quarterly journal and international journal of health care quality assurance. Salih Kat? rc? oglu graduated from the Department of Business Administration in Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU). He completed his M.
A. study in Economics.He earned his Ph. D degree in Economics from Uludag University (Bursa, Turkey) in 2000.
Currently he is working at EMU as senior lecturer in the Department of Banking and Finance. Recently he has been involved in various researches and projects. Besides publications and ongoing academic studies, Dr. Katircioglu has already supervised M. A.
theses. Salime Mehtap Smadi received her Ph. D in Organisational Behaviour from Marmara University, Turkey. Currently, she is a full time lecturer in the Department of Business Administration.She is also the Assistant Coordinator of the EMU International Center, where she is actively involved in designing support systems for international students, devising strategies for international promotion and student recruitment and preparing advisory reports for the EMU Rectorate.
She has recently completed a UNOPS/UNDP-PFF sponsored Auditor Training program in the field of ISO 14001, which qualifies her to become one of the first consultants in the field of Environmental Management Systems island wide.Her research interests include expatriate adjustment, cross cultural communication, service quality and sustainable tourism development. The complex nature of services coupled with the growing prominence of the services sector has also increased the need for better service quality. Customer satisfaction is another important aspect for service organizations and is highly related with service quality. As service quality improves, the probability of customer satisfaction increases, which in turn leads to customer retention, increased tolerance for service failures and positive word of mouth advertising about the organization.Services play an important role in the economy of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC henceforth), which is struggling under the United Nations (U.
N) imposed embargoes. The banking industry, tourism and the higher education sector have locomotive roles in the economic growth of the island. Currently there are 32 banks operating in the TRNC. Total deposits generated by the banking industry were around 85% of GNP in 2002. The sector has been plagued by crises which has led to the liquidation of seven banks in the past. Due to the banking crises, customers have switched to banks with a long history and sound reputation.
This has caused excess demand for bank services and long queues in banks. The quality of one to one contact with the customer has decreased due to service time pressures. Currently banks are focusing their efforts on attracting new customers and stimulating economic spending by the introduction of credit cards, which allow customers to make a wide range of purchases on an installment basis. This study analyzes service quality and customer satisfaction in the banking industry of North Cyprus based on Parasuraman et al’s (1988) SERVQUAL instrument. 60 customers of various retail banks in the TRNC responded to a Turkish translated version of the SERVQUAL instrument. The research results revealed that the expectations of bank customers in the TRNC were not met.
The largest gap between expectations and perceptions was found in the assurance dimension. Factor analysis revealed that the SERVQUAL scale proved to be of a five dimensional structure in this study. The overall satisfaction of Turkish Cypriot bank customers, was mainly influenced by the assurance and responsiveness dimensions of the scale.That is, Turkish Cypriots expect their banks to portray a sense of safety in transactions and confidence in the customer regarding the way they carry out their activities. Bank customers also expect employees to be competent, courteous, to provide prompt service and to be always willing to help the customer. Additionally, overall satisfaction of bank customers seemed to have a statistically significant and positive effect on their word of mouth.
Managerial implications of the results are discussed, particularly with possible European Union (EU) membership lurking in the horizon.
