PERCEIVED INFLUENCE OF CUSTOMERS’ IMAGE OF AN ORGANISATION ON PATRONAGE: A FOCUS ON ECOBANK

Abstract

The rate at which most organisations are losing customers has increased in recent years. The confidence and credibility that some of their customers have in them have eroded. The reason for this trend is not farfetched; it is the lack of effective Public Relations to create or change the image that the customers already have of them. In this research, “Perceived influence of customers’ image of an organisation on patronage: A focus on Eco bank”. There was an attempt to find out if the customers of Ecobank have had experiences worth keeping as an image of the bank. The image they have formed of the bank through their communication processes would affect their decision of continuous patronage and loyalty to the bank. The major objective of this study is to determine the extent to which these images that are formed help to keep the customers. The study design used was Survey. Since the whole of the customers of the bank in Nigeria cannot be used, the researchers focus on Lagos State. Lagos State is a large settlement and because of this, the study population was stratified to two commercial and industrial localities, Ikeja and Victoria Island. These places were selected and made representatives of the organization under study. Eight branches of the bank were used and a sample size was 400 respondents. 50 copies of the questionnaire were administered in each of the eight branches. The researchers found out that the percentage of respondents who have a positive image of the bank is 52%.  It was also found out that many of the respondents consider their experience with the bank good (35%), while those who consider their experiences with the bank as fair are 25%. However, 17% of the respondents think the experiences have been bad, while 23% of the respondents are indifferent about their experience. The researchers therefore recommends among others that thorough training should be carried out for the staff of Eco bank because based on the findings of this research; many customers do not enjoy the services they get from certain members of staff. Therefore, they should be trained in other to avoid having multiple images of the bank which can be as a result of staff acting differently in their various branches.