| dc.description.abstract | This study concerns customer retention strategies applied by commercial banks in Kenya. The main objectives of the study were to establish the extent to which the customer retention practices are applied and also to what extent the adopted strategies have supported retention. The need for the study arose because of the threat of substitute products like the use of mobile to transfer money, e-commerce among others, the threat of new entrant, and the need to prevent customer attrition in banking industry, as it is less costly to retain old customers than to acquire new ones.
The researcher employed a survey design with a population of 44 banks headquartered in Kenya. Data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. A 5-point likert scale was used. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics consisting (frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation).
Regarding the extent to which customer retention practices were applied, findings indicated that, the service quality strategies are practiced to a large extent and they were also regarded as the most important practices in attaining customer retention, while loyalty strategies were the least popular.
Based on the findings, the researcher recommends that the banks should put more emphasis on establishing switching cost mechanism, reward loyal customers, establish specific goals for customer retention, appoint someone to head customer retention perform lost customer analysis and conduct periodic surveys.
The study suggests' more research to be done about loyalty strategies in the banking industry. Finally the limitations encountered during the study one of them being, lack of decision makers to fill the questionnaires have been stated | en_US |
