INTERNAL MARKETING: A STUDY OF

MANAGEMENT SUPPORT AND EMPLOYEES’

COMMITMENT TO CUSTOMER SERVICE IN

BANKING INDUSTRY OF MALAYSIA

SIM CHIN MING

FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTANCY

UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA

NOVEMBER 2008

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INTERNAL MARKETING: A STUDY OF MANAGEMENT SUPPORT AND EMPLOYEES’ COMMITMENT TO CUSTOMER SERVICE IN

BANKING INDUSTRY OF MALAYSIA

SIM CHIN MING

Bachelor of Economics and Business University of Malaysia Sarawak

Sarawak, Malaysia 1999

Submitted to the Graduate School of Business Faculty of Business and Accountancy

University of Malaya, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Business Administration

November 2008

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ABSTRACT Internal Marketing is getting more attention by today’s conglomerates. The concept

underlines that “employees as customer” of which employees’ needs have to be fulfilled

by the business so that it benefits the business by way of improved working morale and

commitment while reduce the turnover rate. This paper aims to examine the internal

marketing relationship and its influence on employees’ attitudes and behaviors in

Malaysian banking environment.

On the other hand, customers’ expectations vary over the time with the standard of

service demanded by customers rose tremendously. Customer complaints arise when

customers experience dissatisfaction in response to waiting time, unresponsive or

impolite employees and core services failure. This moderating role of customer

complaining behavior on the nature of internal marketing relationship is worth for study.

The study first examines the relationship between organization-employee and supervisor-

employee and their association with job motivation and commitment to customer service.

Subsequently, customer complaint is expected to have differential moderating effects on

the relationship between organization-employee and supervisory-employee.

A total of 410 samples from bankers attached to the Klang Valley region were collected

and used to test the hypotheses. Through the empirical data analysis, the model was

partially supported. The paper ended with exposure of theoretical and managerial

implications.

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(ACKNOWLEDGEMENT)

First and foremost, I would like to give my greatest appreciation to my family members,

particularly my mother and sister who had rendered me all the invaluable supports,

spiritually and mentally, since the beginning of my study until the completion of entire

MBA program.

I would like to express my gratitude to Pn Apnizan Abdullah for her expertise and

generous guidance throughout this project. Thank you for her constructive ideas and

prompt response and the essential inputs and encouragement to complete this project on

time.

I would also like to extend my appreciation to friends who extended a helping hand and

giving me spiritual support all the time. Their kindhearted effort is greatly appreciated.

Last but not least, my special thanks also go to all my bosses and fellow colleagues who

had been patient and rendered their support to me throughout the MBA program.

Without the assistance and support of the above mentioned, this study would not have

been completed.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Overview of Banking Services 1.2 Research Questions 1.3 Objective of the Study 1.4 Scope of the Study 1.5 Limitations of the Study 1.6 Organization of the Study 1.7 Definition 1.8 Summary

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.0 Introduction 2.1 Internal Marketing

2.1.1 Organizational Support 2.1.2 Supervisory Support

2.2 Job Motivation 2.3 Commitment to Customer Service 2.4 Customer Complaints 2.5 Conceptual Framework 2.6 Control Variables 2.7 Comparison of internal Marketing between Local Banks and Foreign Banks 2.8 Summary

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CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.0 Introduction 3.1 Development of Hypothesis 3.2 Research Activity 3.3 Selection of Measures

3.3.1 Scale Development of Organizational Support 3.3.2 Scale Development of Supervisory Support 3.3.3 Scale Development of Job Motivation 3.3.4 Scale Development of Commitment to Customer Service 3.3.5 Scale Development of Customer Complaints 3.3.6 Scale Development of Control Variables 3.3.7 Scale Development of Respondent Profile

3.4 Sampling Design 3.5 Data Collection Procedure 3.6 Data Analysis Techniques

3.6.1 Scales of Measurement 3.6.2 Conducting Factor Analysis 3.6.3 Conducting Correlation Regression Analysis

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3.6.4 Conducting T-test 3.6.5 Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) in Research

3.7 Summary

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CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH RESULT 4.0 Introduction 4.1 Preliminary Analysis

4.1.1 Frequency Distribution and Respondents Profile 4.1.2 Measures of Central Tendencies and Dispersion

4.2 Factor Analysis on Variables 4.3 Reliability of Scale 4.4 Bivariate Analysis : Pearson Analysis 4.5 Multivariate Analysis: Multiple Regression Analysis

4.5.1 Job Motivation 4.5.1.1 Model 1 4.5.1.2 Model 2 4.5.1.3 Model 3

4.5.2 Commitment to Customer Service 4.5.2.1 Model 1 4.5.2.2 Model 2 4.5.2.3 Model 3

4.6 T-Test Analysis (Comparison of internal Marketing between Local Banks and Foreign Banks)

4.7 Summary

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CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 5.0 Introduction 5.1 Summary and Conclusion

5.1.1 Job Motivation in Response to Internal Marketing 5.1.2 Commitment to Customer Service in Response to Internal

Marketing 5.1.3 Commitment to Customer Service in Response to Job

Motivation 5.1.4 The Mediating Role of Customer Complaints on the Job

Motivation 5.1.5 The Mediating Role of Customer Complaints on the

Commitment to Customer Service 5.1.6 Difference of Internal Marketing between Local Bank and

Foreign Bank 5.2 Limitations 5.3 Suggestion for Future Research 5.4 Management Implications 5.5 Summary

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References Appendix 4.1: Total Years of Banking Employment Experience Appendix 4.2: Years of Experience with Current Employer Appendix 4.3: Descriptive Statistics for All Variables Appendix 4.4 : Normality Test for All Variables Appendix 4.5: Factor Analysis - Inter-Item Correlation Matrix Appendix 4.6 Reliability of Scale – Total Variance Explained Appendix 4.7 Reliability of Scale (Two-Factor) – Total Variance Explained Appendix 4.8 Reliability of Scale (Two-Factor) - Pattern Matrix and Structure Matrix Appendix 4.9 Reliability of Scale (Two-Factor) – Communalities of All Variables Appendix 4.10 Reliability of Scale – Communalities of All Questionnaire Items Appendix 4.11: Reliability of Scale - Pearson Correlation Matrix Appendix 4.12: Hierarchical Moderated Regression Analysis for Dependent Variable – Job Motivation Appendix 4.13: Hierarchical Moderated Regression Analysis for Dependent Variable – Commitment to Customer Service Appendix 4.14: T-Test for Local Bank & Foreign Bank Format Questionnaire

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LIST OF FIGURES

NO. FIGURE TITLE PAGE1. Figure 1.1

Rationale of Research Framework

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2. Figure 2.1 Internal Marketing Variables

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3. Figure 2.2 Conceptual Framework

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LIST OF TABLES

NO. TITLE OF TABLE PAGE1. Table 3.1

Construct of Independent Variable – Organization Support

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2. Table 3.2 Construct of Variable – Supervisory Support

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3. Table 3.3 Construct of Variable – Job Motivation

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4. Table 3.4 Construct of Variable – Commitment to Customer Service

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5. Table 3.5 Construct of Control Variables

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6. Table 3.6 Construct for Demographic

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7. Table 3.7 Scale of Measurement

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8. Table 4.1 Demographic Distribution of Respondents

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9. Table 4.2 Relationship between Education and Job Level of Respondents

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10. Table 4.3 Factor Analysis : KMO and Bartlett’s Test

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11. Table 4.4 Component Correlation Matrix

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12. Table 4.5 Reliability of Scale on Overall Variables

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13. Table 4.6 Reliability of Scale on Factors

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14. Table 4.7 Descriptive Statistics on T-test

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CHAPTER 1:

INTRODUCTION

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1.0 Introduction

“Forward Banking1”, “The World’s Local Bank2”, “Excellence Is Our Commitment3” are

among the popular slogans promoted by the respective banking institutions. The slogans

reflect the banks’ respective future business plans and opportunities but more

importantly, it tells their customers on the expected level of services to be offered to

them. As service providers, it is inevitably that quality of services is paramount for

banking institutions in order to compete and survive in today’s turbulent business

environment. Therefore, customers’ satisfaction is always the mainstay of banking

operation and any negative complaints must be avoided or minimized by each department

of the banks. The focus of this study is to investigate the relationship between the

organizational internal marketing efforts and the employee’s commitment to provide

excellent customer services and the implication of the customers’ complaints towards the

management’s effort in promoting excellent customer services.

1.1 Overview of Banking Services

Customer service is an important element in the banking industry in Malaysia today. The

banks are competing to enhance its value offerings through series of innovative products.

For instance, Hong Leong Bank Berhad launched “Foreign Currency Fixed Deposits”

which allows customers to invest in nine major currencies and enjoy interest rate that

vary according to the type of currency. Standard Chartered Bank Berhad on the other

hand introduced three financial plans that cater to the individual’s life stage, i.e.

education, retirement and lifestyle. In term of services, e-Banking system is widely used

1 CIMB Bank Berhad 2 HSBC Bank Berhad 3 Public Bank Berhad

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by business corporations as well as individual customers today. The system allows the

banking transactions to be carried on 24 hours per day without approaching any nearest

bank. The extensive innovation also applies to banking premises. The bank branches had

undergone series of revolution and renovation plan. Modern technology such as plasma

television, touch screen computer is a necessity to be shown or displayed in the banking

premises. Today, branches of CIMB Bank Berhad promote a delightful banking

atmosphere with new furnishing concept and banking environment. The broader

customers’ service space and a new outlook of banking hall give customers a refreshing

view of banking business. On the other hand, OCBC Bank Berhad is launching IQ

Banking which is aimed at providing a one stop solution of all banking transactions for

their customers. The innovation is expanding and new ideas and concepts will be

promoted from time to time to gain positive responses from the public.

The success of a new product or concept and the continuity improvement of customers’

services are relied not only on the management capability in forecasting the economy

structure and market demand and the advancement of technology particularly in

management information system but it also depends deeply on the commitment of the

banks’ employees in delivering quality services. Human resource is the most valuable

asset to them in view that the banking environment is complex, challenging and demands

high level of profession and skilled employees. In view of the above, human resources

development plays an important role in today’s business.

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The concept of “employees as customer” was first recommended by Barry et al. (1976).

The concept underlies that employees, like external customers require to have their need

satisfied while organization pursues its business strategy. Implicit in this concept is the

assumption that fulfilling employees’ needs enhance the employee’s motivation and

retention. This leads to the higher degree of employees’ satisfaction and generate higher

level of external customers’ satisfaction and loyalty via employees’ commitment to

customer services. The above concept has been widely adopted by the banking industry

today. Banking industry is always deemed offering better benefits and career

advancement for its employees as compared to other private sectors in Malaysia. Training

programs are offered from time to time and the programs are not limited to individual job

scope. Instead, motivational training is either conducted by external party or in-house

trainer is getting good responses from human resource development department.

On the other hand, the customers’ complaints tend to demoralize the employees on their

effort to extend excellent customer service. The New Straits Times Newspaper on 18th

July 2008 reported that the George Town magistrate’s court ordered CIMB Bank Berhad

to compensate an elderly businessman of RM10,000 due to the failure of automated teller

machine (ATM) card in fulfilling the bank’s promised level of service. The Bank was

sued for breach of contractual obligation which resulted in lost of reputation and

sustained inconveniences, embarrassment, distress, discomfort and anxiety suffered by

the plaintiff. The incident happened when the employee of the bank explained and

promised on the ATM services available to the customer. The ATM withdrawal service is

to be expected not only available at any of the bank’s own ATM machines but also other

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ATM machines so long it carried the “MEPS” symbol. This is a standard service

provided by all local banks in Malaysia to their customer. However, the problem

occurred when the customer was unable to make the withdrawal even though after

several attempts at different banks and at different ATM machines despite his account

maintained sufficient deposits. This incident obviously happened due to some unknown

technical errors but it does affect the service level of employees towards the bank

customers. Employees are puzzled on the level of bank’s commitment that they convey to

every customer. They are also afraid of any disciplinary action that could be taken against

them arising from customer complaints on the malfunction of any system or service

failure in the near future. In addition, the employees are also in doubt of the technology

advancement of the banking system and portray low confidence on the online banking

system.

As the demand for excellent customers’ service increases over times, the number of

customers’ complaints also grow tremendously. Today’s customers expect immediate

attention and fast service rendered to them all the time. In the instance reported by

Kwang Ming Daily News on 26th July 2008 where a customer blamed that the slow

service by the bank employees as the cause of an unauthorized withdrawal of her savings

of RM3,000 after her ATM card was reported lost. All these complaints had inevitably

jeopardized the employees’ performance and upset the level of customer service

provided.

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1.2 Research Questions

The following research questions attract the interest of this study.

1. What is the role of internal marketing particularly on organizational and

supervisory support towards the employee job motivation?

2. What is the relationship between internal marketing particularly on

organizational and supervisory support and employees’ commitment to

customer service?

3. Is bank employee’s job motivation positively influence the employees’

commitment to customer service?

4. Does the growth of customers’ complaints negatively impact the effort of

internal marketing?

5. Is there any significant difference in internal marketing effort between local

banks and foreign banks operating in Malaysia?

1.3 Objective of the Study

This study examines the concept of internal marketing in relation to employees’

commitment to customer service in the Malaysian banking industry. The objective of the

paper is therefore to explore the following:

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• To discover the internal marketing of banking industry in the Klang Valley

region.

• To explore the employees’ job motivation and commitment to customer service

of banking industry in the Klang Valley region.

• To examine the relationship between internal marketing and the employees’ job

motivation and commitment to customer service.

• To examine the impact of customers’ complaints towards the organizational

internal marketing and employees job motivation and commitment to customer

service.

• To determine any significant difference between local banks and foreign banks

operating in Malaysia on internal marketing aspect.

The study will eventually expand our understanding on the role of internal marketing in

banking industry and how it influences the employees’ customer service level. This

useful information will be valuable for banking institutions to continue to excel and be

dominant in local market particularly and global market generally.

1.4 Scope of the Study

The scope of study covers the banks’ employees located in the Klang Valley region.

Klang Valley is the central of Malaysia’s economy and politics activities. In addition, it is

the main hub for Malaysian banking industry since all the banks’ headquarters are located

here. The bank employees attached to this region will have direct contact with their

respective head office personnel and senior management. Therefore, it is suitable to study

the research based on the samples collected from this region.

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1.5 Limitations of the Study

The main limitation of the study is on data collection. In view of high population of bank

employees within the Klang Valley, the data collection process will be costly and time-

consuming. With the limited resources, the study will be conducted by way of data

sampling with the anticipation that the samples taken would provide readers with a good

picture and representative population.

However, a good representative sample is indeed difficult to achieve especially using a

non-probability sampling methods. Nevertheless, this method is generally more

straightforward while remains acceptable in research study. The samples are subject to

both availability bias and selection bias. The self-administered questionnaires are

generally cheaper and easier to collect the required data from the most respondents within

a limited timeframe. The problem of non-response rate is mitigated by way of hand

distribution and collection of questionnaires.

The size of samples obtained was constrained by the resources; both time and cost

available. With the limited resources, the questionnaire will be distributed randomly to

banks employees involved in customer service directly in their respective daily routine. It

is inevitable that the samples do not cover all division of banking employees and

availability bias exists in the data collection, but the survey will focus preliminary on

those employees who have direct dealing with external customers. The availability bias

also appeared in inequality of samples size between respondents from local and foreign

banks and response from certain banks’ employees might not be available.

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1.6 Organization of the Study

This paper is constructed in the following manner. The next chapter provides readers with

the theoretical background of the study. The literature review on framework and concept

of internal marketing and customer complaints will be discussed in details. Chapter 3

presents the methodology adopted in conducting this study including data format, source

of data, data collection and data analyzing method. This will be followed by discussion of

research findings through empirical investigation, summarizing the data collected and the

results as presented in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 contains discussions and conclusions that are

drawn from the study, recommendations and suggestions for future research.

1.7 Definition

Prior literatures provide various definitions of the terms from different perspective and

school of study. Therefore, there is a need to identify the most suitable and useful

definition for terms and concepts applied in the paper. For reading and the scope of this

paper, the following definitions will be adopted and applied in this research.

Organizational support is defined as a general perception of the extent to which an

organization values an employee’s contribution and cares for his well-being (Eisenberger

et al., 1990).

Supervisory support is defined as the degree of consideration expressed by the immediate

supervisor or manager for his subordinates (Michaels and Spector, 1982)

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Employee job motivation is defined as the degree to which the employee psychologically

identifies with his portfolio or duties (Kanungo, 1982).

Commitment to customer service is defined as the relative propensity if an employee to

engage in continuous improvement and to exert effort on the job for the benefits of

customers (Peccei and Rosenthal, 1997).

Customer complaint is defined as negative customer feedback on the employee

performance and their works and diminishes employees’ sense of meaningfulness of their

roles (Kahn, 1990).

1.8 Summary

In summary, the rationale of research framework is appended as in illustrated in Figure

1.1.

Figure 1.1 Rationale of Research Framework

Internal Marketing

Customer Complaints

Job Motivation Commitment to Customer service

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The rationale of research framework as indicated in Figure 1.1 shall serve as the basis of

the study. Internal marketing is the independent variable in the research whereas

commitment to customer service is the dependent variable. Customer complaints serve as

mediator against the impact of internal marketing towards job motivation and

commitment to customer service. Job motivation acts as dependent variable in measuring

the contribution of internal marketing and as independent variable while examining its

implication towards commitment to customer service. The above framework is supported

by literate review which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2.

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CHAPTER 2:

LITERATURE REVIEW

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2.0 Introduction

In this chapter, the literature review of internal marketing and the relevant concepts will

be analyzed and discussed to support the conceptual model of this study. The discussion

covers theoretical background, academics’ arguments and the meaningful findings of

previous studies. This chapter will be concluded with the conceptual framework applied

for this research.

Internal Marketing is a popular discussion topic since it was first recommended by Barry

et al. (1976). The concept underlines that “employees as customer” of which employees’

needs have to be fulfilled by the business so that it benefits the business by way of

improved working morale and commitment while reduce the turnover rate. The definition

quoted by Gronroos (1981) is simple, “selling the firm to employees” but truly explain

the essence of internal marketing concept. Since then, this area has attracted much

attention of researchers and there are plenty of studies conducted accordingly (e.g

Morgan, 2004; Naude et al., 2003; Davis, 2001). Furthermore, the internal marketing

concept has been tested in several industries and companies including banking and

financial institutions (e.g. Caruana and Celleya, 1998; Yavas et al., 2003). Kotler (1980)

describes that the major part of strategic planning analysis of a bank is to assess the

customers’ perception on the bank’s branding, products and competitors and the success

of a bank depends largely on strategy of which internal marketing is a major substance.

Heskett et al. (1997) concludes that the satisfaction of employees reflects on customer

service and vice versa resulting in cycle of good service.

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2.1 Internal Marketing

Sasser (1976) urges that a successful service company must first sell the job to its

employees before it can sell its service to customers. Hence, the main objective of

internal marketing is to obtain motivated and customer conscious employees at every

level of organization (George, 1990). Berry and Parasuraman (1991) narrow the

personnel to those “qualified” employees and suggest that the strategy of shaping job-

product to fit human needs. They conclude that the employees are to be viewed as

customers and the jobs are the products. Products must be attractive, develop and

motivate employees thereby satisfying the employees’ needs and wants. According to

Greene et al. (1994), the success of internal marketing relies on the embracement of the

said concept from top management and subsequently communicates down to the very

bottom of the firm.

Wilson (1991) found that there is no great distinction in terms of marketing technique

between external and internal customers except that internal customers are objective and

the marketing approach should be proactive. Employees seldom voice out their needs

openly due to several reasons of which are partly contributed by the bank’s management

itself. Employees’ requests are usually transformed as extra cost to the management.

Furthermore, any requests are deemed as employees’ dissatisfaction towards current

benefits and therefore reciprocation such as disciplinary action could be taken against

those involved to avoid spread of bad word of mouth among colleagues. For junior bank

employees, such requests are raised through respective national employees unions.

Although, negotiation made between the employees union and the banks association at

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higher level, it is the duty of a particular bank to discover their respective employees’

needs and convince their employees that the organization can meet such needs.

Nonetheless, there is a significant difference between implementation of internal

marketing at strategic and tactical level (Gronross, 1981). At strategic level, an in-house

environment that fosters customer consciousness and sales oriented among the employees

is to be created through management effort and company’s policy while the tactical level

emphasizes on selling services, campaigns and other marketing efforts and initiatives to

the employees. The effective internal marketing should be an active and marketing-like

approach with a variety of related activities implemented (George, 1990).

Despite that, scholars identify that internal marketing enhances the competitive advantage

of an organization particularly for service industry through market orientation and

improved customer service to derive customer satisfaction and loyalty (Van Egeren and

O’connor, 1998), however the number of companies implementing internal marketing is

relatively small (Rafiq and Ahmed, 2000).

In the survey conducted by Caruna and Calleya (1998) on retail bank managers in Malta,

it reveals significant relationship between internal marketing and employee commitment

to organization. The effect of internal marketing towards employee commitment is

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positive. The employees appeal to have emotional attach to the organization and pursue

the goals of organization.

For this study, internal marketing shall be concentrated on management support and two

key variables were identified, i.e. organizational support and supervisory support as

illustrated in Figure 2.1. As described in Chapter 1, organizational support is defined as a

general perception of the extent to which an organization values an employee’s

contribution and cares for his well-being (Eisenberger et al., 1990). On the other hand,

supervisory support is defined as the degree of consideration expressed by the immediate

supervisor or manager for his subordinates (Michaels and Spector, 1982). These variables

are expected to have positive influence towards job motivation and commitment to

customer service. However, the result varies when the numbers of customer complaints

increased.

Figure 2.1

Internal Marketing Variables

Internal Marketing

Supervisory Support

OrganizationalSupport

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2.1.1 Organizational Support

Allen and Meyer (1990) identify several organizational variables that contribute

positively towards employee commitment. These variables include level of challenges,

clear organization role and goal, management’s receptive towards employees’

suggestions, organization dependability and employees’ participation in decisions about

their works.

The bank often shackles their employees with policy and procedure which ends out with

inflexible and standardized services. Barry (1987) proposes that a good bank should give

freedom to its employees to serve the customers by way of symbolic management. The

symbolic management involves the use of symbols to nurture shared values in the bank

which guides employees’ behavior while preserving their freedom to serve the customer

truly. This idea increases the level of job challenges by way that employees are to resolve

any ad hoc problems and issues at their level. Looking at the current banking

environment in Malaysia, this practice is widely adopted in today’s banking industry.

Employees are expected to extend “customized” service to their customers so long as the

action does not breach any policy.

Chaill (1995) reported that it is crucial to have shared vision throughout the organization.

To achieve that, the organizational learning program plays an important role to

disseminate the idea and gauge positive responses from employees. According to Senge

(1990), there are four key concepts to build an organizational foundation of learning.

These are (1) philosophy in which focus made on vision, values and objectives; (2)

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attitude and belief in which there is genuine caring and communality of purpose; (3)

develop system thinking and shared commitment via skills and capabilities; and (4) tool,

which refers to the system development. Therefore, the continuous support from

organization in building the skill and knowledge of employees is vital to achieve

betterment of commitment to customer service. Furthermore, the support through

organization learning cultivates positive attitude and belief towards organization missions

and goals.

Employees especially those front liners interact directly with customers. They understand

the customers’ needs and match the organization’s products with such needs.

Furthermore, they collect intelligence from competition and promote the overall

organization’s image as well as the image of its products (Gounaris, 2008). With such

advantages, employees are able to update the bank management on what exactly

customers’ needs are and assess the bank’s ability in meeting such requests. On the other

hand, despite that back office employees do not interact directly with customers, but their

willingness to respond timely to customers’ requirements or to make any extra effort in

handling the customers’ requests will be valuable linked to customer services (Zeithaml

et al., 2001). Consequently, employees both front liners and back office personnel could

provide valuable information and constructive suggestion to improve the customer

services. The openness and receptive of management on employees’ feedbacks certainly

motivate employees to contribute more and more ideas to the organization.

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Empowerment or decision making by employees is reported to be positively link to

employees’ performance and job motivation (Boshoff and Allen, 2000). The employees’

participation in decision making is an important aspect of internal marketing (Naude et

al., 2003). The empowerment reflects the level of organization trust towards employees

and offers the acceptable level of flexibility in handling the daily duties. Furthermore

empowered employees feel better about their jobs and serving customers because

empowerment removes the constraints the service blueprint imposes and gives employees

room to maneuver when serving customers (Reardon and Enis, 1990). In almost all

organizations particularly banking industry, the higher the position the greater authority is

conferred to the employee.

The literatures conclude that organizational support positively influences the degree of

job motivation and employees commitment to customer service. An employee who

appreciates the organizational support rendered to him will reciprocate the organization

with high degree of job motivation (Eisenberger et al., 1990) and therefore boost his

commitment to the job assigned.

2.1.2 Supervisory Support

The role of leader played by supervisor that directly influences in what manner the

employees will be motivated is described in the life-cycle theory developed by Maslow

(1954). The theory illustrates the important relationship between task and relationship

oriented dimensions of management which helps supervisors to see how they should

adjust according to the level of maturity within each worker. Furthermore, the theory also

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portrays the dynamics of high and low propensities of the task and relationship oriented

supervisors when mixed with differing circumstance and diverse groups of subordinates.

In drawing attention to the two-faceted focus of supervisors, the theory is very effective

in explaining superior-subordinate relationship. Blanchard and Hersey (1990s)

subsequently reviewed this theory in 1990s with recommendation of “Situational

Leadership” theory.

Varey and Lewis (1999) claim that internal marketing is a relationship and knowledge

management which focus to be given among others on building close relationship

between supervisors and subordinates. Hence, the supervisory support plays a crucial role

in motivating employees towards better commitment to customer service. The unique

relationship that exists between an employee and his supervisor is fairly described in the

leader-member exchange literature (Burns and Otte, 1999). It is discovered that when an

employee is appraised favorably and encouraged to feel comfortable in his role, the

supervisor is occasionally rewarded with a more committed and competent staff member

(Deluga, 1994).

As defined by Allen and Meyer (1990), supervisory support can be in the form of peer

cohesion, equal and fair treaty among employees, and feedback to their performance. In

the meantime, Naude et al. (2003) point out that accuracy and open communication

between supervisor and subordinate is vital to build a strong teamwork. Information

sharing is one of key factors in the study conducted by Bansal et al. (2001).

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The employees tend to seek supervisory advice, support and guidance in handling the

daily duties (Bell et al., 2004). Furthermore, the supervisor is always the source of

reference when an employee faces any difficulties or customer complaints. Nevertheless

rather than formal meeting, employees prefer an informal discussion with their superior

to resolve any issue discretionally (Infante et al., 1993). Two ways joint problem solving

and extensive information sharing are the essence of supervisor-member relationship

(Davis, 2001). Davis (2001) suggests that this manner enables consensus achieved

between both party as well as mutual understandings. O’Reilly and Roberts (1976)

emphasize the importance of information exchange through a healthy communication

atmosphere which employees are willing and able to communicate freely. The idea

obviously does not support top-down management pattern.

The feeling of not being recognized for a job well done is likely to evoke a negative

attitude towards the organization (Tornow and Wiley, 1991). Rewards satisfaction is

therefore deemed as a key evaluation factor of employee towards the organization. In this

area, supervisor needs to observe and compliment the effort made by his employees and

rewards them based on their respective achievements. As highlighted earlier, equal and

fair treatment among employees is necessary to gain employees commitment.

The individual job motivation can be derived from a specific job assigned (Naude et al.,

2003). Individual employee feels motivated and enthusiastic when supervisor assigns a

meaningful job to him. However, work load can impact the employees’ attitude and

hence detrimental to their perception about how much support they receive from their

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supervisor to do their jobs well (Lux et al., 1996). An overloaded employee usually loses

the chance of information sharing while he is also deemed unable to give extra attention

to customers’ requests. To overcome this, Gronroos (1981) suggests an effective

coordination of tasks between subordinates and departments to be employed by

supervisor.

The level of supervisory support has positive impact on employees’ job motivation and

commitment to customer service. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the benefits

of internal marketing could be realized by understanding the nature of relationship

marketing between supervisor and his subordinates (e.g. Morgan, 2004; Clark et al.,

1997).

2.2 Job Motivation

The significance of job motivation in order to derive employee level and organization

level success is not new in internal marketing (Brown and Peterson, 1993). Motivation of

high quality personnel is one of the critical factors in service industry where the quality

of the services is the only real differentiating factor between competitors (Thompson et

al., 1978). Job motivation positively leads to employees’ customer orientation and hence

greater customer satisfaction (Burnthorne et al., 2005). In the study conducted at a large

Australian bank, Ballantyne (2003) discovers that the motivated staff tends to be more

customer conscious and focus on internal work effort to meet the needs of external

customers. Furthermore, the job motivation leads to a cycle of success that results in

increase of awareness of employees’ role in customer satisfaction (Schlessenger and

31

Heskett, 1991). Job motivation also completely influences integration of employees into

winning team and therefore concentrates on quality customer service as the core of their

business. A job motivated personnel tends to portray active behavior and higher level of

commitment to the organization.

There are several factors influencing job motivation. In the study by Deal and Kennedy

(1982), job motivation is connected to job situation and organization culture. Meanwhile

Salancik and Pfeffer (1985) observe that a positive relationship between length of service

and job motivation. Similar result appears in the research by Schlesinger and Zornitsky

(1991). Herzberg et al. (1959) developed two distinct lists of factors of which the first

group focused on motivator factors. Organizational support in the form of advancement,

responsibility, recognition and possibility of growth are among the key job factors

whereas the extra job factors covering interpersonal relations with supervisor, peers and

other colleagues. Job factors refer to factors intrinsic within the work environment like

recognition. Conversely, extra job factors tend to include extrinsic entities such as

relationship with co-workers.

Matching the right people to the rights jobs can motivate the employees towards better

customer services (Sargeant and Asif, 1998). In the research conducted on UK banking,

Sargeant and Asif (1998) notice on the importance to link the expertise needed in the

respective division with the skill and resources. Employees’ personal interest on a

particular task does not reflect their capability in handling the duty instead the relevant

skills must be cultivated before assigning the task to them. In this case, better service

32

could be rendered to customer if the employees post the required skill, experience and

knowledge. This phenomenon motivates the employees by way of self-actualization

(Maslow, 1954) when the employees intend to pursue such knowledge. Knowledge

management therefore attracts much attention in improving the employees’ skill by way

of organizational knowledge creation. The knowledge held by individuals is amplified

and internalized as part of an organization’s knowledge base (Inkpen, 1996).

On the other hand, Rafiq and Ahmed (2000) commented that it is not sufficient that

employees are motivated to perform better but they must be also sales-minded in order to

achieve the organization goals and objectives. Enhanced, sustained performance on the

job results are not so much achieved through the fully furnished office or working

environment but the basic duty assigned in the job description and all those intrinsic

feelings that produce positive attitudes about the duty (Tietjen and Myers, 1998).

2.3 Commitment to Customer Service

Kiesler (1997) defined commitment as a binding of the individual to the position implied

by his act or decision. Organization commitment therefore involves the relative strength

of an employee’s identification with an involvement in a particular organization (Caruana

and Calleya, 1998). A key factor determines the magnitude of the commitment is the

openness with which the individual declares his commitment to a position (Harverson

and Pallak, 1978). Given the said definition, a marketing staff of a banking institution is

deemed committed to his duties when he achieved the required sales target, whereas an

operation staff shall emphasize on the daily transactional activities and compliance to the

33

bank’s policies and procedures. Both are expected to commit to give excellence customer

services to current and potential customers.

The bank is defined as “high-contact” service business by Chase (1978) where there is a

considerable contact between the service provider and the customer. Employee

performance materially affects the service outcome and hence becomes part of the

product. Therefore, the bankers need to play special attention to employee quality and

performance particularly on customer service. The quality of the service rendered to

customers is inseparable for quality of the service providers (Lovelock, 1983) such as

bank. In the study carried out by Greene et al. (1994), most of the bank employees would

rather provide good service than bad service and rather be a hero than a villain to the

customers. Bank employees are generally keen to commit on customer services. The

customer service improvement would lead to improvement of customers’ relationship,

retention of customers and complement marketing activities at the least cost (Ballantyne,

2003).

On the other hand, lack of commitment from employees can be harmful to an

organization in the form of poor performance and increase of operating cost.

Management need to break out of a cycle of failure (Svhlessenger and Heskett, 1991).

The cycle of failure cause dissatisfaction among employees, high turnover and

deterioration of service quality.

34

There are certain personal characteristics influencing the employee’s tendency to be

customer oriented (Harris, 2002). The employees who lack openness and extroversion

can hardly be genuinely customer oriented (Brown et al., 2002). Whenever the

management attempts to promote new ideology, these employees always face difficulties

to match their behavior with the new marketing principles. This usually results in

emotion dissonance (Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987), which in turn causes emotional

exhaustion (Morris and Feldman, 1997), role stress and ultimately to job dissatisfaction

(Dewettinck and Buyens, 2003). In view of the above, management has to take into

consideration that not all employees are enthusiastic with idea of making extra efforts to

meet customer expectations. Notwithstanding, Morgan and Piercy (1991) urge that proper

training can overcome this issue. Bansal et al. (2001) claims that training with an

emphasis on specific tasks and rewards the employees based on the customer service

offered could mitigate this problem.

People’s attitudes and actions towards an object are highly conditioned by their belief

about the object (Assael, 1987). Employees’ commitment to customer service will

depend on their belief that the organization has taken the necessary steps to satisfy their

needs. The successful application of internal marketing is therefore translated into

positive employees’ attitudes towards their work including organizational commitment,

job involvement, work motivation and job satisfaction (Tansuhaj et al., 1991).

Richardson and Robinson (1986) found that there is a significant relationship between

internal marketing and service quality rendered by the employees. This positive

35

relationship was also proven in the other studies (eg. Berry, 1981; Donnelly et al., 1985;

George, 1990).

2.4 Customer Complaints

Customer complaining issue has been widely discussed in previous researches (eg.

Bougie et al., 2003; Nyer and Gopinath, 2005; Wetzer et al., 2007). Customer complaints

arise when customers experience dissatisfaction in response to waiting time,

unresponsive or impolite employees and core services failure. In the first example given

in Chapter 1, the complaint arises when the bank failed to deliver the promised core

service whereas the second complaint is on long waiting time. Emotion researches

describe dissatisfaction as “a negative term, related to anger, hatred and disgust” (Storm

and Storm, 1987). Roseman et al. (1994) and Shaver et al. (1987) found out that complain

commonly appears when customers are angry with the service rendered, while

satisfaction is a partial mediator of negative effect on complaint behavior (Westbrook,

1987).

Customer complaints allow the organization to implement series of service recovery

attempts and gain the opportunity to reduce customer turnover. Academicians encourage

the voicing of dissatisfaction from customers to reduce the market share attrition (Bell et

al., 2004). Firm can ensure high level of customer satisfaction and loyalty by effectively

soliciting, handling and analyzing customer complaints (Fornell, 1981; Smith et al.,

1999). This is in line with the improved customer-employees relationship built along the

recovery plan and past research suggests that customers who are satisfied with the

36

resolution of their complaints demonstrate high repurchase intentions (Halstead and Page,

1992; Smith and Bolton, 1998). Researches also indicated that an organization can

increase their market share and reduce their expenditure for offensive marketing such as

advertising through effective complaint management (Fornell and Wernerfelt, 1987).

Hence, investment in complaint management offers unambiguously positive benefits and

yields high return to the organization (Rust et al., 1992).

Nevertheless, the past studies also revealed that customers like to share their experience

with other customers through word of mouth communication and adverse shopping

experience will lead to spread of negative word of mouth. This is detrimental to firms

(Herr, Kardes & Kim, 1991) particularly when the negative word of mouth aimed to warn

others by telling them not to patronize a service provider. Previous researches also found

that two thirds of dissatisfied customers do not complain to marketer but rather switch

provider or engaged in negative word of mouth (Singh, 1988). To avoid this disastrous

impact, firm must be careful in handling each complaint. It is discovered that as many as

twelve positive experiences are necessary to offset the negative impact of one bad

experience (Smith & Bolton, 1998). Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that many

firms do not manage complaints effectively (e.g. Anderson, 1988; Richins, 1987).

Customer feedback is often regarded as a tool for improvement (Teas, 1981). Feedback

plays an important role in organizational and individual learning, particularly to rectify

the failure and improve its services. Feedback serves as a critical ingredient for banking

to improve its services and enhance its value. The banking services are continuously

37

improved in line with customers’ demand and expectation. For instance, the automated

services reduce the hassle of travel to the nearest banks and provide great convenience to

all customers.

The demoralizing effect of customer complaints or negative feedback is well proven

(Kohli and Jaworski, 1994). Customer complaints can have damaging implication for

frontline employees and influence their attitude towards their role. Although employees

especially sales representative respond to various situation such as service failure

differently at different career stage (Cron, 1984), customer complaints can seriously

cause loss of confidence and control over their role among new employees. The effect of

customer negative feedback on employees’ attitudes and performance can be described

by role theory (Rizzo et al., 1970). Role theory briefly explained that “when competing

behaviors expected of an individual are inconsistent, the individual may experience

stress, become dissatisfied, and not perform as effectively as when expectations are

imposed on him”. This divergence in expected behaviors is possible when employees

who perform to the requirements and expectations of the banks are confronted with

customer complaints that demand a different kind of behaviors from the norms of the

banking operation. The degree of pressure that employees perceive will rely on the

credibility of, and importance attributed to, both customers’ and banks’ needs. The higher

the degree of role conflict, the less enthusiasm for the role and hence less commitment to

customer service behaviors (Bell et al., 2004).

38

The employees’ comfort levels within the organization are likely to be affected when

there is an unanticipated customer complaint (Piercy, 1995). Employees are likely to

become skeptical, perceive organizational support as ineffective and misdirect.

Employees’ sense of meaningfulness in their roles and responsibilities will diminish

when customers disrespect and not appreciative of their work. Complaints are deemed by

employees as their work is not valued and treasured. This results in employees

disengaging from their work and lack job motivation. Accordingly, customer complaints

negatively mediated the relationship between organizational support and both job

motivation and commitment to customer service.

In contrast, the customer complaints lead to positive relationship between supervisory

support and both job motivation and commitment to customer service. When customer

complaints increased, the supervisor will be an obvious source of reference and help.

Furthermore, social support and sense of human from supervisor is considered as a mean

by which employees can moderate the effect of stress (Daniel and Guppy, 1994). Social

resources like information, empathy, compassion and social contact can reduce the strain

from customer complaints (Srivastava and Sager, 1999). This is obviously cannot be

performed by any non-personal entities.

2.5 Conceptual Framework

The literature review discussed earlier on explains the advantages of internal marketing

towards the organization performance particularly in the services industry (Sasser and

Arbeit, 1976), like banking. The internal marketing appears to be positively linked to

39

both job motivation and commitment to customer service in most of researches conducted

(e.g. Ahmed and Rafiq, 2003; Varey and Lewis, 1999; Helman and Payne, 1993).

Pursuant to the theory developed by Herzberg et al. (1959), organizational support

contributes to job factors motivation while supervisory support plays an importance role

in extra job factor motivation. In the meantime, a job motivated personnel tends to

portray active behavior and eagerness in handling the duties, hence demonstrate high

commitment to customer services (Greene et al., 1994).

Despite that, there are numerous studies conducted in banking industry (e.g. Greene et al.,

1994; Sargeant and Asif, 1998; Caruana and Calleya, 1998). There are limited studies

conducted in the Malaysian banking environment. To make the topic more interesting,

the customer complaints will be the mediator to assess the relationship of internal

marketing and those mentioned variables. Kahn (1990) claim that the employees’ level of

confidence towards the organizational support will be diminished when the numbers of

customer complaints increased. In such scenario, supervisory support is deemed as a

mean to eliminate job stress (Folkman et al., 1986).

Based on the above statement, the conceptual framework of this study is outlined as per

next page (Figure 2.2). The similar model is applied by Bell et al. (2004) in their study to

identify the relationship between internal marketing and customer complaints.

40

Figure 2.2

Conceptual Framework

2.6 Control Variables

Control variables consist of a range of psychological contracts employees have with the

organization (Rousseau, 1990) to avoid problems of model misspecification.

Psychological contract composes of the perceived obligations of parties. Therefore, it is a

necessity to look into the dimensions of the psychological contract other than the support

dimensions that are the main effects within the scope of hypothesis. Rousseau (1990)

identifies several events on this aspect which cover promotion opportunities, fair pay,

sufficient tools and resources, job security, career development, job autonomy and

Customer Complaints

Organizational Support

Supervisory Support

Job Motivation

Commitment to Customer service

H1

H2

H3

H4

H5

H6a

H6b

H6c

H6d

41

supportive working environment. Bell et al. (2004) argues that although psychological

contracts very idiosyncratic, it remains meaningful domains that can be generalized

across individual and organization.

Promotion opportunity is defined as the degree of movement between different status

levels in an organization (Price and Mueller, 1981). Fair pay or distributive justice refers

to fairness of the outcomes an employee receives from the organization (Price and

Mueller, 1986). As for the third component, organization is obliged to provide adequate

resources to its employees in order to carry out effectively the daily routines. Job security

is the extent to which an organization provides stable employment for employees

(Oldham et al., 1986). The provision of power and responsibility or more appropriately

refers as job autonomy indicates the degree to which an employee can influence the way

his job is performed (Peccei and Rosenthal, 1997).

While psychological contracts have positive obligation towards every party, but job

routinization and job ambiguity is deemed to be violated and weaken the employee-

organization relationship. Price and Mueller (1981) define job routinization as the degree

to which employees’ job are repetitive whereas role ambiguity is defined by Rizzo et al.

(1970) as the degree to which an employee’s role expectation is unclear.

In measuring supportive working environment, the factors of coworker support and team

orientation are taken into consideration. Coworker support is the degree of consideration

expressed by colleagues (House, 1981) whereas team orientation refers to the degree to

42

which organization stress collaboration and corporation (Hult and Ferrell, 1997) or the

closeness of intra-organizational relations (Bell et al., 2004).

2.7 Comparison of Internal Marketing between Local Banks and Foreign Banks

Corporate ownership in the Malaysian capital market can be clearly identified along the

ethnic (such as bumiputras or non-bumiputras) and national lines (example, local or

foreign ownership) (Cheong, 1990; Jesudasan, 1990). The foreign investment is widely

influenced by the globalization.

The closer integration of countries is one of the factor contributing towards

overwhelming globalization but the local belief, attitudes and behaviors unique to a

country’s culture remain exist (Culpan et al., 2007). Zhou et al. (2005) believes that the

core feature of management of multinational company is the diversity of culture,

therefore the cross-cultural management. In the meantime, Zhuang (2003) proposes that

the culture difference is the major factor to affect the business success or failure of

multinational company. This is further supported by Kitching (1973) where the

management failure resulting from improper cultural fusing accounted for one-third of

the business failures. Therefore, companies operate in global market adapt to host country

environment while retaining some of their own customs and practices (Culpan et al.,

2007). Nevertheless, the ways of organizing and managing business activity is shaped by

the national culture of a firm’s founders and the national circumstances of their

foundation (Morosini et al., 1998). Organizational culture is defined as a pattern of basic

assumption that a given group has invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope

43

with its problem of external adaptation and internal integration and that have worked well

enough to be considered valid and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct

way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problem (Schein, 1984). Kessapidou

and Varsakelis (2002) on the other hand argue that corporate culture is also affected by

the purpose of organization, technology and size of the organization. Hofstede (1980) and

Nikolaidis (1992) concur that managing style of a foreign affiliate is affected by the level

of technology but it is tempered more by cultural characteristics. Despite that, some

researches reported that management practices compatible with the national culture of the

host country can produce better performance outcomes (Wilkins and Ouchi, 1993;

Earley, 1994; Newman and Nollen, 1996). On the other hand, different findings appear in

the studies by Mardas et al. (1996) and Morosini et al. (1998).

Rosenzweig & Nohria’s (1994) study on foreign companies located in the USA

discovered that dual pressures for local adaptation and internal consistency. Pursuant to

their study in human resource management of USA affiliates, only three human resource

areas (benefit, leave and more lady staff) differ significantly from parent company. On

the other hand, Tinsley and DiPrete (2001) compared the personnel policies of a bank and

its overseas branches found that personnel policies for low level employees essentially

followed the host country, but that for upper level employees’ parent company’s policy

dominated. Royalty (1998) discovers that cross national convergence exists where

company’s personnel policies are uniform and international. Deutsche Bank in Turkey

stresses that leadership, organizational value, team work, operational responsibilities and

personality development are key criteria in the promotion program (Culpan et al., 2007).

44

The above criteria also applied to local bank, but recommendation from immediate

superiors and a few years’ observation are crucial for local bank promotion (Culpan et al.,

2007). The study by Zhou et al. (2005) discovers several similarities among multinational

companies in human resource area such as cultural balances, effective communication

and performance appraisal.

Performance and education are the common components in all banks. Hofstede (1980) in

this area recommends the concept of individualism-collectivism dimensions which

explains how culture influence might affect workplace dynamics and individual task

performance. According to him, high individualistic societies encourage innovation and

initiative and emphasize the importance of financial as well as social rewards for

achievement while collectivistic societies are more emotional dependent on members in

their organization. Collectivists anticipate receiving higher rewards, feel more efficacious

and perform better while working in a group (Earley, 1993). A foreign firm that has

originated in a highly individualistic society when investing in a more collectivism

country imports various corporate strategies and management and applying aggressive

marketing strategy (Shane 1992) hence, the higher the performance of the foreign

affiliates in a collectivism country (Kessapidou & Varsakelis, 2002).

Notwithstanding the above, Bhagat and Prien (1996) pointed out that globalization does

not only require the adoption of a cross-cultural perspective in order to successfully

accomplish goals in the context of global economy but also need a new and higher

standard of selection, training and motivation of people. People have to develop their

45

intercultural communication competence in order to live meaningfully and productively

in the global village (Chen and Starosta, 1996). According to Kealey and Protheroe

(1966), training can be defined as any intervention aimed at increasing the knowledge or

skills of the individual, which help them cope better personally, work more effectively

with others and perform better professionally. Cross-cultural training focuses on any

procedure used to increase an individual’s ability to cope with and work in a foreign

environment (Tung, 1981). Zakaria (2000) identifies several benefits from cross-cultural

training of which the training aids to improve coping with unexpected events and reduce

the uncertainty of interaction with foreign nationals. The training is deemed to be

effective in reducing or preventing failure in expatriate assignment (Giacolane and Beard,

1994). O’Brien (1998) further explains that the training is not only about educating the

basic awareness of cultural differences but to shift the mind set of the participants. At

organizational-level, strategic and cultural factors have the highest relevance in designing

effective training to ensure the training objectives are consistent with the design of the

training program (Zakaria, 2000). Desphpande and Viswesvaran (1997) comment that

through effective program, people understand the organization system and value better

which leads to better socio-cultural adjustments because they increase the level of

satisfaction with the foreign company contact, reduce cultural distance and help to

develop a more positive attitude towards the company.

However, Black and Mendenhall (1990) discovered that many people are still not

convinced that training can do much to solve the working problem. The failures are also

reported in the researches by Dowling and Schuler (1990), Bird and Dunbar (1991) and

46

Tung (1987). Kealey and Protheroe (1996) suggest that not everyone sees training as the

principal solution to cultural problem.

The past literatures recommend that multinational companies are minimizing the cultural

differences to achieve better return of investment. This study therefore will examine and

compare the internal marketing effort made between domestic banks and foreign banks

operating in Malaysia. The result shall illustrate insignificant differences between the

respective banking management.

2.8 Summary

Based on the literature review discussed in this chapter, the conceptual framework is

formed by adopting the model used by Bell et al. (2004). The methodology of study will

be discussed in the following chapter.

47

CHAPTER 3:

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

48

3.0 Introduction

In this chapter, the focus will be on the methods applied in conducting this research.

Remenyi et al. (1998) defines research methodology as the procedural framework within

which the research is conducted. In general, research methodology describes the overall

shape and design of this study and the entire data collection process. Apart from that, this

section also discusses the model replicated and adapted in the study. The source of data

and the analysis techniques chosen will be discussed in details. The essence is to justify

the method applied in this study with rationale and valid explanations.

Veal (2005) highlights an important point of conducting research where research

approach is not considered to be intrinsically good or bad, rather to be deemed as

appropriate for the task in hand and good use of methods. There are many factors to be

considered when choosing an appropriate research methodology such as the topic and

scope (Remenyi et al., 1998).

The response from those working in the relevant field has been an increasing series of

empirical deductive theory (Leonard and McAdam, 2001). Hence, deductive theory

which represents the cause-effect relationship (Carson and Coviello, 1995) between

theory and research is applied in this study. On the basis of what is known about in a

particular field and of theoretical considerations in relation to that field, a hypothesis (or

hypotheses) is deduced that must be subjected to empirical scrutiny. Embedded within

the hypothesis will be concepts that will need to be translated into researchable entities

(Bryman and Bell, 2003). Any research study must be based on reliable data and the

49

accuracy of deductive method relying on the sample size (Eisenhardt, 1989). This chapter

begins with examination of literature to derive hypotheses followed by the processes of

collecting data to test those hypotheses.

3.1 Development of Hypothesis

Pursuant to the literature review discussed in previous chapter, the following hypotheses

are developed to meet the research objectives.

Hypothesis 1:

There will be a positive direct relationship between organizational support and job

motivation.

Hypothesis 2:

There will be a positive direct relationship between organizational support and

commitment to customer service.

Hypothesis 3:

There will be a positive direct relationship between supervisory support and job

motivation.

Hypothesis 4:

There will be a positive direct relationship between supervisory support and commitment

to customer service.

50

Hypothesis 5:

There will be a positive direct relationship between job motivation and commitment to

customer service.

Hypothesis 6a:

The positive relationship between organizational support and job motivation will be

diminished as the number of customer complaints increases.

Hypothesis 6b:

The positive relationship between organizational support and commitment to customer

service will be diminished as the number of customer complaints increases.

Hypothesis 6c:

The positive relationship between supervisory support and job motivation will increase as

the number of customer complaints increases.

Hypothesis 6d:

The positive relationship between supervisory support and commitment to customer

service will increase as the number of customer complaints increase.

3.2 Research Activity

Research activity can be conducted in different forms based on the appropriateness and

the scope of the research. In this paper, the research activity will be primarily focused on

51

survey. Survey methodology is popular in research field for a number of reasons. It

brings an issue into focus by defining and detailing characteristics which causes users to

focus their attention, hence generating a clear and consensual view of the issue. In

addition, the results of a survey are typically quantified and amenable to statistical

treatment. Statistical inference allows one to extend the results obtained from a sample

of respondents to a larger population. Lastly, survey methodology is fast and

straightforward as compared to others methods (Chauvel and Despres, 2002). Survey is

so important in business research that business researchers even conduct research in the

conduct of surveys.

Bryman and Bell (2003) urge that survey is a cross-sectional design in relation to which

data are collected on more than one case (usually quite a lot more than one) and at a

single point in time in order to collect a body of quantitative or quantifiable data in

connection with two or more variables (usually many more than two), which are then

examined to detect patterns of association.

Survey typically involves non-experimental designs and self-reports from sample of

cases. Common variations include surveys of informants and enumerations of entire

target population (Bryman and Bell, 2003). There are three types of commonly used

surveys, which vary in terms of how data are gathered: questionnaires, personal interview

and telephone interview. Each type of survey involves slightly different administrative

techniques and has to deal with different problems.

52

Questionnaire has been selected for the purposes of this research project paper.

Questionnaire is the most frequently used approach in management and marketing

research (Churchill and Iacobucci, 2005; Veal, 2005). It is the cheapest and particularly good

for sensitive question and information the respondents have to look up. However, the

disadvantages of questionnaires studies are the highest on measurement error and non-

response bias (refusal and non-contacts). Personal interview on the other hand is the best

for complex topics and researches that need high response rates but it tends to be the

highest in sampling error. Telephone interview is the useful tool when deadline is tight

although it is likely to be affected by unmeasured variables, particularly uncontrolled

variation affecting the dependent variables (Sekaran, 2002).

Questionnaires response rate vary from as low as 10 percent to 90 percent. Some political

and marketing surveys achieve only 10 percent response rate while other topic manages

to obtain over 90 percent responses. A typical response rate is about 50 percent. A

“good” one is ranked between 60 to 70 percent. A low response rate always carries the

danger of extensive non-response bias.

To summarize, methodology illustrates the way in which the results were analyzed.

Frequently, all information are fed into a computer, which produce cross tabulations on

every aspect of the data. While the researchers wade through the tables to identify the

patterns and trends. For those hypotheses which are tested, the analysis of data will be

much focused.

53

3.3 Selection of Measures

In line with the research method, a well designed questionnaire is paramount to ensure

the effectiveness of data collection and data analysis. Poor questionnaire leads to wrong

data interpretation and hence unable to fulfill the research objectives. Nevertheless,

questionnaire design is very subjective and it is difficult to construct a quality

questionnaire.

To overcome this problem, the questionnaire used in this project was mainly adapted

from the various studies. Bell et al. (2004) had consolidated these questionnaires and

adapted in their study for the similar research objectives. In general, the questionnaire is

segregated into two models. Model one aims to gauge the relevant information in

answering the research questions whereas model two consists of a range of control

variables used to avoid problems of misspecification. All items will be measured on 5-

point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strong agree). Each question

and scale has a history of reliable and validity measurement.

3.3.1 Scale Development of Organizational Support

Organizational support is defined as the extent to which employees believe the

organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being (Eisenberger et al.,

1986). In the questionnaire developed by House (1981), the focus will be to gauge the

information of employees’ perception towards their respective organization’s effort on

the following aspects. Firstly, it assesses the employees’ perception on their welfare

(Berry and Parasuraman, 1991) under the organization. Secondly, the questionnaire

54

focuses on problem solving (Infante et al., 1993). Lastly, it measures the dependency of

employees (Davis, 2001) towards organization when difficulties arise.

The summary of the construct for organizational support is presented in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1

Construct of Independent Variable – ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT

Description of Measure Reference Organizational Support Bell et al. (2004) My company is very concerned about the welfare of its employees. House (1981) Senior management at my company (i.e head/ regional head) is willing to listen to work-related problems.

House (1981)

I can rely on my company when things get difficult at work. House (1981)

3.3.2 Scale Development of Supervisory Support

Michaels and Spector (1982) define supervisory support as the degrees of consideration

expressed by immediate supervisor for his subordinates. A three items scale designed by

House (1981) could effectively measure the variable. Similarly for organizational

support, the focus of the questionnaire for supervisory support is to assess the employees’

perception on benefits such as welfare (Berry and Parasuraman, 1991), problem solving

(Infante et al., 1993) and dependency (Davis, 2001) from their respective supervisor or

manager.

The summary of the construct for supervisory support is presented in Table 3.2.

55

Table 3.2

Construct of Variable – SUPERVISORY SUPPORT

Description of Measure Reference Supervisory Support Bell et al. (2004) My supervisor is very concerned about the welfare of those under him or her.

House (1981)

My supervisor is willing to listen to work-related problems. House (1981) My supervisor can be relied on when things get difficult at work. House (1981)

3.3.3 Scale Development of Job Motivation

In measuring job motivation, three items scale introduced by Iverson (1996) will be

adapted in this study. Job motivation is defined as the degree to which employees

psychologically identifies with his job (Kanungo, 1982). The questionnaire emphasizes

on three aspects. It first measures the level of job satisfaction (Heskett et al., 1997).

Employees’ interest on the duties carried (Naude et al., 2003) is the next focus. Finally

the questionnaire aims to gauge the information on the level of involvement an employee

(Boshoff and Allen, 2000) has in the job carried by him.

The summary of the construct for job motivation is presented in Table 3.3.

Table 3.3

Construct of Variable – JOB MOTIVATION

Description of Measure Reference Job Motivation Bell et al. (2004) The major satisfaction in my life comes from my job. Iverson (1996) Most of my interests are centered on my job. Iverson (1996) I am very much involved personally in my work. Iverson (1996)

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3.3.4 Scale Development of Commitment to Customer Service

A six items measure recommended by Peccei and Rosenthal (1997) will be used to

determine level of commitment to customer service. Pursuant to Peccei and Rosenthal

(1997), commitment to customer service is defined as the relative propensity of an

employee to engage in continuous improvement and to exert effort on the job for the

benefit of customers. The questionnaires cover the scope of quality service (Lovelock,

1983), ideas and suggestion contribution (Harris 2002), continuously improvement

(Ballantyne, 2003) and extra effort to service customers (Greene et al., 1994).

The summary of the construct for commitment to customer service is presented in Table

3.4 below.

Table 3.4 Construct of Variable – COMMITMENT TO CUSTOMER SERVICE

Description of Measure Reference Commitment to Customer Service Bell et al. (2004) In our company, we are always working to improve the quality of service we give to customers.

Peccei and Rosenthal (1997)

We have specific ideas about how to improve the service we give to customers.

Peccei and Rosenthal (1997)

We often make suggestions about how to improve customer service in our company.

Peccei and Rosenthal (1997)

We put a lot of effort into our jobs to try to satisfy customers. Peccei and Rosenthal (1997)

No matter how we feel, we always put ourselves out for every customer we serve.

Peccei and Rosenthal (1997)

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3.3.5 Scale Development of Customer Complaint

Customer complaint is defined as negative customer feedback provided at organizational

level (Bell et al., 2004). These feedbacks could be in both formal and non formal form. In

general, the formal complaints are in the form of writing or letter whereas informal

complaints refer to those verbal complaints. In any form of complaints, the data should be

maintained at the respective department for future reference purpose. Therefore, the

number of complaints could be derived from the respective department records. Similarly

to Bell et al. (2004) research method, the number of complaints for the past 3 months will

be applied as a moderating factor in this study.

3.3.6 Scale Development of Control Variables

Model two outlines several control variables that are deemed to have psychological

contracts generalized across the individual employee and organization. This paper adapts

several modes of questionnaires developed by various researchers in measuring the

control variables. Coworker support adapts House (1981) study whereas questionnaire

from Price and Mueller (1981) is applied for promotion opportunity. Others sources of

construct questionnaires are resource adequacy (Iverson, 1992), job autonomy (Peccei

and Rosenthal, 1997), job security (Oldham et al., 1986), job routinization (Price and

Mueller, 1981), role ambiguity (Rizzo et al., 1970), distributive justice (Price and

Mueller, 1986) and team orientation (Hult and Ferrell, 1997).

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The summary of the construct for control variables is as tabulated in Table 3.5.

Table 3.5 Construct of Control Variables

Construct Description of Measure Reference

Control variables Psychological contracts Bell et al. (2004) Coworker support My coworkers can be relied on when things get

difficult on my job. House (1981)

My coworkers are willing to listen to my job-related problems.

House (1981)

My coworkers are helpful to me in getting the job done.

House (1981)

Promotion opportunity

Promotions are regular in my company. Price and Mueller (1981)

I am in a dead-end job. Price and Mueller (1981)

There is a good chance to get ahead in my company.

Price and Mueller (1981)

Promotions in my company are based on merit. Price and Mueller (1981)

Resources adequacy I have adequate equipment and system to do my job well.

Iverson (1992)

I have enough support from my manager to do my job well.

Iverson (1992)

I have enough support from the company to do my job well.

Iverson (1992)

Job autonomy I can use my own personal judgment in carrying out my job.

Peccei and Rosenthal (1997)

I have the freedom to decide what I do on my job. Peccei and Rosenthal (1997)

I can make my own decisions in carrying out my job.

Peccei and Rosenthal (1997)

Job security I am confident that I will be able to work for my company as long as I wish.

Oldham et al. (1986)

My job is a secure one.

Oldham et al. (1986)

If my present job was eliminated, I would be offered with another post/ job by my company.

Oldham et al. (1986)

Job routinization My job has variety. Price and Mueller (1981)

The duties in my job are repetitious (e.g. do the same thing over and over again).

Price and Mueller (1981)

I have the opportunity to do different tasks in my job.

Price and Mueller (1981)

Role ambiguity I generally know what my responsibilities are.

Rizzo et al. (1970)

I know exactly what is expected of me.

Rizzo et al. (1970)

I typically receive a clear explanation of what is to be done.

Rizzo et al. (1970)

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Distributive justice I am rewarded fairly for the amount of effort I put in.

Price and Mueller (1986)

I am rewarded fairly considering the responsibilities that I have.

Price and Mueller (1986)

I am rewarded fairly considering my education and training.

Price and Mueller (1986)

Team orientation A team spirit exists in our ranks.

Hult and Ferrell (1997)

Around here, the cross-functional teamwork is the common way of working rather than the exception to the norm.

Hult and Ferrell (1997)

There is a commonality of purpose in our company.

Hult and Ferrell (1997)

There is total agreement on our company’s vision across all levels and departments within our company.

Hult and Ferrell (1997)

Our company is committed to sharing its vision for the organization with other banks.

Hult and Ferrell (1997)

3.3.7 Scale Development of Respondent Profile

The scale of respondent profile is derived from the findings of various studies. The scale

is mainly focus on development of appropriate scale for demographic data such as

gender, age, marital status, monthly income and education level. These data aim to assess

the representativeness of the sample. Besides, it is a necessity to differentiate the sample

from those attach to local and foreign banks so that a fair comparison could be made.

The summary of the construct for respondent profile is as tabulated in Table 3.6.

Table 3.6 Construct for Demographic

Description of Measure Reference Gender Arora and Arora (2006) Age Divine and Lepisto (2005) Marital Status Greenwell et al. (2002) Monthly Income Lee (2000) Education Level Lee (2000)

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3.4 Sampling Design

As highlighted in chapter one, Kuala Lumpur is the hub of the nation’s economic

activities and all banks either local or foreign locate its head office in the capital city. The

banks in this scope of study cover primarily various types of commercial banks operated

in Malaysia, both conventional and Islamic. There are 9 domestic banks of which

Malayan Banking Berhad is the leading local bank, followed by CIMB Bank Berhad and

Public Bank Berhad. On the other hand, the major foreign banks operating in Malaysia

among others are Citibank Berhad, HSBC Bank Berhad and OCBC Bank Berhad.

In determining the sample size, generalizations to populations from data collected using

any probability sample shall be based on statistical probability. In general the larger the

size of sample, the more accurate in sample generalizing to the population. Hair et al.

(1998) recommends a minimum sample size of 100 whereas Coakes and Steed (2005) are

of the view that the sample size should not be less than 200. A total of 600 questionnaires

were distributed randomly to banks employees who are directly involved in customer

service with the anticipation of at least two third of respondents will revert with their

view on the topic discussed.

The questionnaires were circulated through various channels including by hand and

email. The data collection was carried out in the month of August and September 2008.

At the best effort, the survey would cover employees from all commercial banks’

employees. However, due to the time constraint and to gauge the desired sample size of

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at least 400, the survey might not cover all types of commercial banks operating in

Malaysia.

With the targeted sample size, the general rule to qualify the sample size for factor

analysis of a study could be met as well. The rule indicates that there should be at least

five times as many observations as there are variables to be analyzed (Sekaran, 2002).

Given a total of 45 statements in the questionnaire, the ideal sample size should not be

less than 225 samples.

3.5 Data Collection Procedure

Data is collected through distribution of self-administered survey form. Questionnaire is

passed to respondents for self completion. Respondents are required to select the most

appropriate answer for each and every statement presented. Non-probability sampling is

adopted in the study. However, the respondents shall be those directly involve in the bank

customer service line.

The first section of the questionnaire defines the definition of internal marketing. It is

followed by the survey form which contains a series of statements about perception of

organizational support which was adapted from Bell et al. (2004) and House’s (1981)

scale of measurement. The next survey will be on supervisory support, job motivation

and commitment to customer service. Five likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree)

to 5 (strong agree) is presented.

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The next section consists of a list of statements on control variables. The statements are

constructed from various studies as described in item 3.3.6 above. Five likert scale is

adapted. Thereafter, respondents are required to indicate total numbers of customer

complaints received at their respective department for the past 3 months.

The last section of the questionnaire is on demographic survey. The survey focuses on

demographic information of respondents such as gender, age group, marital status,

education level, monthly income, job level, employment and years of experience.

Respondents’ profile was sequenced in the last section to induce more insight of the

survey concern.

Respondents are further assured of confidentiality in answering the questions. This

permits analysis of the research hypotheses. The survey is entirely in English.

3.6 Data Analysis Techniques

The data collected will undergo the following steps of analysis.

1. To explore the demographics of respondents and to determine the

representativeness of samples response to the population of bankers in Klang

Valley.

2. To analyze with factor analysis method to purify the measurement items for each

variables.

3. Use the hierarchical moderated regression in identifying the relationship between

independent variables and dependent variable.

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4. To underline the difference of internal marketing effort between domestic bank

and foreign bank by using T-test method.

3.6.1 Scales of Measurement

In this study, interval scale, ratio scale and nominal scale are employed in the respective

sections as summarized in Table 3.7 below.

Table 3.7 Scale of Measurement

Section : Variable Scale Measure of Average Organizational support Interval Mean Supervisory support Interval Mean Job motivation Interval Mean Commitment to customer service Interval Mean Customer complaints Ratio Mean Control Variables Interval Mean Demographic Nominal Mode

For interval and ratio scale, the numbers represent some meaningful trends. The numbers

tell researchers how far apart the objects are with respect to the attribute being measured

(Churchill and Iacobucci, 2005). The difference between interval and ratio is the value of

zero. Interval scale does not allow zero value whereas ratio accepts zero value in data

analysis. Both interval and ratio scale allow researchers to quantify the data through

series of mathematical operation. Mean method will be used to determine the average of

data.

On the other hand, nominal scale is simply segregating the data into several identified

categories with any order or structure. The number is useful to identify the individual

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respondent. The mode technique will be used for measures of average (Churchill and

Iacobucci, 2005). Unlike interval and ratio scale, nominal scale allows researcher to

qualitatively distinguish groups by categorizing them into exclusive and exhaustive set

(Sekaran, 2002).

In order to test the hypotheses, the following techniques will be adopted.

3.6.2 Conducting Factor Analysis

First and foremost, the factor analysis problem is to be defined and the factor analyzed to

be identified. Subsequently, a correlation matrix of these variables is constructed and an

appropriate factor analysis method is chosen. Pursuant to the objectives of the study, the

factor scores may be calculated to represent the factors in the subsequent analysis. Lastly

the fit of the factor analysis model is determined.

3.6.3 Conducting Correlation Regression Analysis

The correlation regression is performed to underline the relationship between

independent variables and dependent variable after extracted from factor analysis. The

hierarchical moderated regression analysis in three steps or three models will be used in

the data analysis.

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3.6.4 Conducting T-test

To source the difference patterns among domestic and foreign bank as part of the

research objectives, T-test is applied. The test is expected to illustrate a clear comparison

between these organizations. Wherever necessary, eta squared will be used to assess the

effect size.

3.6.5 Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS) in Research

SPSS is one of the leading software for business research. The friendly program is easy to

use with a wide range of data manipulation tools. The latest version, SPSS for Window

16.0 software is the primary program used in analyzing the data collected and output

generations.

3.7 Summary

In summary, this chapter describes the methods to be adopted in conducting this research.

From development of hypotheses through various literatures support to the design of

questionnaires by adapting the previous studies and the data analysis manner, the

mechanism of the study is proven reliable and effective in answering the research

questions. In addition, the proposed sample size is justifiable pursuant to Hair et al.

(1998) and Coakes and Steed’s (2005) recommendations. In the next chapter, the result of

the survey will be evaluated in detail.

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CHAPTER 4:

RESEARCH RESULT

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4.0 Introduction

This chapter focuses on the presentation of the findings obtained through a series of

statistical analysis. The presentation will first describe the demography profile of

respondents. It follows with the normality testing by way of descriptive statistics.

Through examining the skewness and kurtosis of the variables, the normality of data

could be conformed. The data are then empirically tested to answer the research

questions.

4.1 Preliminary Analysis

It is essential to test the normality of the data prior to answering any of the research

questions. The descriptive statistics therefore provide a detail finding in this area.

Nevertheless, before entering into normality finding, it is best to brief on the respondents’

demographic profile.

4.1.1. Frequency Distribution and Respondents Profile

Frequency distribution is obtained for all respondents’ personal data. Based on the total

respondents of 410 person (N=410), the respondents profile is tabulated in Table 4.1.

Table 4.1

Demographic Distribution of Respondents

Categories Frequencies (N = 410)

Percentage

Gender Male 120 29 Female 290 71

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Age ≤ 20 2 1 21 - ≤ 30 197 48 31 - ≤ 40 151 36 41 - ≤ 50 54 13 ≥ 51 6 2 Ethnic Group Malay 108 26 Chinese 272 66 Indian 15 4 Others 15 4 Marital Status Single 188 46 Married without children 37 9 Married with children 183 44 Divorcee/ separated 2 1 Education background Primary school 2 1 Secondary school 79 19 Certificate/ Diploma 115 28 Bachelor degree 192 47 Post graduate/ Profession 22 5 Job Level Clerical/ Non-clerical 92 22 Officer 86 21 Executive 147 36 Manager 75 19 Senior Manager 10 2 Monthly Income ≤ RM1,499 22 5 RM1,500 - ≤ RM2,999 181 44 RM3,000 - ≤ RM3,999 117 29 RM4,000 - ≤ RM4,999 40 10 RM5,000 - ≤ RM5,999 24 6 ≥ RM6,000 26 6 Category of Bank Local banks 200 49 Foreign banks 210 51 Type of Banks Conventional 350 85 Islamic 26 6 Investment 28 7 Development & Financial Institution

6 2

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Majority of respondents are female. Female covers 71% or 290 of total samples size

whereas male respondents are only 29% (120 samples). On the other hand, as many as

48% of respondents fall under age group of 21 – 30 years old. This is followed by age

group of 31 – 40 years old and of 41 – 50 years old which cover approximate 36% and

13% respectively. Other age groups are comparatively less significant where

cumulatively only make up 3% of total respondents. This profile illustrates that majority

of the respondents are young and in the middle-aged group. Besides, the profile also

indicates wide coverage of age group from fresh school leavers (aged up to 20 years old)

to senior working adults (aged 51 and above).

As for ethic group segregation, 66% of the respondents are Chinese whereas Malay

covers 26%. Indian and other ethnic group cover approximate 8% of total respondents.

The ethic profile covers all three major ethnic groups staying in Malaysia which are the

Malays, Chinese and Indians. Psychology researchers (Singhapakdi et al., 1995; Hunt and

Vitell, 1986) argue that each ethnic group could have different perception on the research

topic and hence affect the result of the study.

As for the marital status, 188 respondents (46%) are single whereas 220 (53%)

respondents are married of which 183 respondents have at least one child. Divorcees or

separated contributed only 1% of total profile.

In term of education background, majority of respondents (47%) hold a bachelor degree.

Diploma and secondary school leavers contributed 28% and 19% respectively. The rest

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are post graduate or professional certificate holders (5%) and primary school leavers

(1%). Based on the above education level, it is foreseeable that majority of respondents

hold at least an executive position in their respective employment. 36% respondents are

working as executive or senior executive level whereas not less than 21% respondents are

holding managerial position. Clerical and officer contributed 22% and 21% respectively.

A simple test on the relationship between education background and job level is

conducted through Chi-Square Tests and the result is illustrated in Table 4.2 below.

Table 4.2

Relationship between Education and Job Level of Respondents

Chi-Square Tests

Value df

Asymp. Sig.

(2-sided)

Pearson Chi-Square 2.067 16 .000

N of Valid Cases 410

a. 12 cells (48.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum

expected count is .05.

Symmetric Measures

Value Approx. Sig.

Cramer's V .355 .000 Nominal by Nominal

N of Valid Cases 410

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The above Chi-square result reveals significant relationship between education

background and job level with p < 0.05 and the effect size is deemed large with Cramer’s

V = .355 (Cohen, 1998).

Majority of respondents (44%) reported monthly income ranged of RM1,500 – RM2,999.

The respondents earned between RM3,000 to RM3,999 monthly covers 29%. About 22%

respondents declared monthly income exceeding RM4,000 whereas only 5% earned less

than RM1,500 per month.

From the same respondent data, 49% or 200 respondents work with local banks currently

while 51% or 210 respondents are attached to foreign banks. These sample sizes met the

requirement recommended by Coakes and Steed (2005) and Hair et al. (1998). As many

as 85% bankers come from conventional bank, while Islamic and investment bank

contributed 6% and 7% respectively. There are approximately 2% of respondents work

with development and financial institution.

To gauge the understanding of the internal marketing effects towards commitment to

customer service, it is essential to find out the respondents’ working experience in the

Malaysian banking industry. 43% respondents are attached to the banking industry for a

period of not more than 5 years whereas 41% respondents have been working in the

industry for a period of 6 to 15 years. Those working in the banking industry above 15

years contributed 16% of which 4 respondents have more than 30 years working

experience in banking line. The statistic reveals that majority of respondents have at least

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5 years working experience and earn sufficient knowledge in the Malaysian banking

operation.

Despite that, majority of bankers attached to the industry for more than 5 years, as many

as 58% of respondents stay less than 5 years with their respective current employer. This

phenomenon shows the high turnover in the banking industry and employee loyalty rate

is relatively low. 31% of respondents have been working with the current employer for a

period of 6 to 15 years. Only 11% respondents or 46 persons work for more than 15 years

with their employer. The detailed profile for banking industry exposure and current

employment exposure are listed in Appendix 4.1 and 4.2 respectively.

4.1.2 Measures of Central Tendencies and Dispersion

The assumption of normality of data is the prerequisite condition for many inferential

statistical techniques. The normality presumes the presence of samples collected towards

the actual population. It therefore measures the degree to which the distribution of

samples corresponds to a normal distribution.

Veal (2005) describes central tendency as to how the scores on a variable tend to be “on

average” their distribution. Whereas dispersion is described as to how the score on a

variable are dispersed across the measurement scale (Veal, 2005).

Descriptive statistic tabulates some useful information for data analysis. The output such

as mean, standard deviation and variance for all the variables enable thorough checking

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on the data and assess the normality of data distribution. The descriptive result is

presented in Appendix 4.3. With N= 410, a total of 45 items were assessed and no

missing value reported. In addition, all standard deviation are lower than the mean which

indicate satisfactory of data collection. In general, the means value of all variables exceed

3.0 except for customer complaint variable.

Kurtosis and skewness methods are used to assess the normality of the data distribution.

The skewness value provides an indication of the symmetry of the distribution whereas

kurtosis provides information about the ‘peakedness’ of the distribution (Pallant, 2007).

A positively skewed distribution has relatively large values and tails off to the right

whereas a negatively skewed distribution has relatively few small values and tails off to

the left (Hair et al., 2006). Positive kurtosis values on the other hand indicate that the

distribution is rather peaked or clustered in the centre with long thin tails. Kurtosis values

below 0 indicate a distribution that is relatively flat (Pallant, 2007). Pursuant to Sekaran

(2002), skewness and kurtosis valued in region of 2 to -2 are deemed acceptable. Coakes

and Steed (2003) further explained that kurtosis valued between 3 to -3 is deemed

satisfactory for social science study. Tabachnick and Fidell (2007) on the other hand

comment that with sample size exceeded 200, it is reasonably that both skewness and

kurtosis will not make a substantive difference in the analysis. Nevertheless, all items in

the questionnaire fulfill the data distribution.

On the other hand, the test of normality through Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic is

illustrated in Appendix 4.4. Although a non-significant result (Sig. value of more than

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0.05) indicates normality of data distribution, but Pallant (2007) argue that with large

samples size, significant result (Sig. value of less than 0.05) of Kolmogorov-Smirnov

statistic is expected. With that, the data collected are deemed acceptable for analysis.

4.2 Factor Analysis on Variables

Factor analysis allows researcher to condense a large set of variables down to a small and

more manageable number of factors. This occurs by way of summarizing the underlying

patterns of correlation and grouping the closely related items. Therefore, factor analysis

serves two main purpose of the study. It first reveals the interrelationship between a

larger numbers of variables and explains these variables in term of the common

underlying dimension. Secondly, it helps to reduce the amount of data needed in data

analyzing, hence make the entire data analyzing process efficient. For this study,

Exploratory Factor Analysis will be applied which experiments with different numbers of

factors until a satisfactory solution is found (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2007).

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) and Bartlett’s Test of

Sphercity result is tabulated in Table 4.3.

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Table 4.3

Factor Analysis : KMO and Bartlett’s Test

The KMO value shows .819 and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericty value is significant (p =

.000), therefore factor analysis is appropriate. Pursuant to Pallant (2007), the minimum

requirement for this test is KMO value must be above .6 with Berlett’s Test of Sphericity

value is significant.

As recommended by Pallant (2007) and Tabachnick and Fidell (1996), it is necessary to

identify and select factorability of the correlation matrix above .3 in Correlation Matrix

table. Unfavorable finding would lead to reconsideration of the use of factor analysis. In

the study conducted by Bell et al. (2004), the factor loading of .4 is applied. As appended

in Appendix 4.5, there are numerous values exceeding the threshold of .3 which is

considered satisfactory.

At the next stage, Kaiser’s criterion method will be adopted to determine the number of

factors. The common approach is to examine the eigenvalues of the result of which those

factors having eigenvalues of greater than one are to be selected (Pallant, 2007; Bryman

and Cramer, 2001). The eigenvalue of a factor represents the amount of the total variance

KMO and Bartlett's Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. .819

Approx. Chi-Square 1565.635

df 91.000

Bartlett's Test of Sphericity

Sig. .000

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explained by that factor. Only four factors (4.561, 1.238, 1.165, 1.118) fulfill the said

requirement which explained 57.7 percent of the total share variance (refer Appendix

4.6). This result is consider unfavorable given that study conducted by Bell et al. (2004)

achieved 13 factors with eigenvalues greater than one which explained 86 percent of the

total variance.

In view of the above, the two factor solution proposed by Pallant (2007) will be adopted.

For two factor solution, only 41 percent of the variance is explained as indicated in

Appendix 4.7. As illustrated in Table 4.4, the component correlation matrix show value

of .398 reveals the strength of the relationship between the two factors (Pallant, 2007).

With this finding, the Oblimin rotation solution will be used to final analyze the factors.

Table 4.4

Component Correlation Matrix

Oblimin rotation solution provides two tables of loading. The pattern matrix and structure

matrix tables (refer Appendix 4.8) therefore show the factor loadings of each of the

variables. As indicated in both table, the main loadings on Component 1 are Organization

Component Correlation Matrix

Component 1 2

1 1.000 .398

2 .398 1.000

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization.

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Support, Resource Adequacy and Supervisory Support whereas Role Ambiguity,

Customer Complaints and Job Routinization are the key loadings on Component 2.

The communalities table (see Appendix 4.9) highlights the information about how much

of the variance in each item is explained. Pallant (2007) suggests that low value (less than

.3) indicates that the item does not fit well with the other items in the component. In this

case, Job Autonomy (.217) is deemed disqualified for further analysis. Further checking

reveals that Job Autonomy has the lowest loading on both component 1 of pattern matrix

(.379) and structure matrix (.421).

The factors qualified for further analysis are Organizational Support (.543), Supervisory

Support (.512), Job Motivation (.301), Commitment to Customer Service (.340), Co-

worker Support (.437), Team Orientation (.524), Job Routinization (.484), Promotion

Opportunity (.402), Distributive Justice (.503), Role Ambiguity (.368), Job Security

(.313), Resource Adequacy (.561) and Customer Complaints (.307).

In the meantime, the communalities value for each item of questionnaire is illustrated in

Appendix 4.10. Those items with communalities values of less than .3 will be excluded

for further analysis. Also it is noted that all three item under Job Autonomy reveals

values of less than the prerequisite threshold of .3.

4.3 Reliability of Scale

Although the questionnaire applied in conducting this research adapts the past literature,

it remains important to assess the reliability of scale. The reliability of a measure is

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therefore established by testing both consistency and stability of factors. Consistency

indicates how well the items measuring a concept hang together as a set. Cronbach’s

Alpha is a reliability coefficient that shows how well the items in a set are positively

correlated to one another. The closer the value of Cronbach’s Alpha to 1, the higher the

internal consistency reliability. DeVellis (2003) and Pallant (2007) suggest that the ideal

value of the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of a scale should exceed .7.

The reliability of scale for overall factors reveals result of .821 as depicted in Table 4.5.

This result indicates good internal consistency reliability for the scale with the samples.

Analysis on the individual items contributing to the internal consistency reliability of the

scale indicated that no improvement could be realized by dropping any items. Thus, all

will then proceed to the next analysis.

Table 4.5

Reliability of Scale on Overall Variables

However, as job autonomy variable is excluded in the analysis, a precise reliability

analysis on each and every variable is required. The Cronbach’s Alpha results for each

factor and the number of items assessed are tabulated in Table 4.6.

Reliability Statistics

Cronbach's Alpha

Cronbach's Alpha Based on

Standardized Items N of Items

.821 .814 13

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Table 4.6

Reliability of Scale on Factors

Factors No of Items Cronbach’s Alpha

Organizational Support 3 .846

Supervisory Support 3 .874

Job Motivation 3 .739

Commitment to Customer Service 5 .836

Coworker Support 3 .914

Team Orientation 4 .776

Job Routinization 2 .656

Promotion Opportunity 4 .641

Distributive Justice 3 .922

Role Ambiguity 3 .774

Job Security 3 .708

Resource Adequacy 2 .701

The Cronbach’s Alpha value shown in the Reliability Statistic tabulated above suggests

very good internal consistency reliability for the scale with the samples for most of the

factors. According to Pallant (2007), value above .7 is acceptable but value above .8 is

preferable. However, it is noted that job routinization and promotion opportunity do not

achieve the required threshold of .7. In this matter, Pallant (2007) recommends further

checking on the value of ‘Corrected Item-Total Correlation’ for these factors. Corrected

item-total correlation gives an indication of the degree to which each item correlates with

total score. Any corrected item value less than .3 is not recommended for further analysis.

The corrected item values for promotion opportunity are .409, .313, .498 and .489

whereas the corrected item value for job routinization is .488. With this finding, both

factors are still applicable for analysis. As there is only one item under customer

complaint, it is not possible to conduct the reliability test. Nevertheless, customer

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complaints factor has been included in the overall reliability of scale testing and the result

is illustrated in Table 4.5 above.

On the other hand, Pallant (2007) also proposes that the reliability of factors could be

determined by way of examining the relationship between the factors. The general rule is

that the factors should have positive relationships between each others. The Pearson

Correlation Matrix appearing in Appendix 4.11 reveals positive values of all items except

customer complaints which indicate that most factors measure the same underlying

characteristic. As customer complaint is a negative influencer in this study, it is therefore

expected to have adverse relationships with other factors.

4.4 Bivariate Analysis : Pearson Analysis

Pearson Correlation analysis is used to describe the strength and direction of the linear

relationship between two variables. It is useful to determine any correlation among the

independent variables as well as between two different sets of variables. The Pearson

Correlation is conducted to ensure no direct relationship between independents variables

in order to avoid multicollinearity that affects the regression model.

From the Pearson Correlation analysis (see Appendix 4.11), the result shows significant

value at 2-tailed test for all variables which p<0.05. However, the data vary between the

variables. Cohen (1988) however suggests the following guidelines in interpreting the

data:

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The strength of relationship is small if r = .10 to .29.

The strength of relationship is medium if r = .30 to .49

The strength of relationship is large if r = .50 to 1.0

Pursuant to the above guideline, 25 sets variables are deemed to be ‘medium’ strength of

relationship with r = .30 to .49. There are 49 sets variables to be deemed as ‘small’

strength of relationship with r = .10 to .29. Only 4 sets variables are reported as ‘high’

strength of relationship with r-value exceeds .50. In the meantime, all variables show

positive relationship with each other except for customer complaints.

4.5 Multivariate Analysis: Multiple Regression Analysis

Multiple regression analysis is a sophisticated extension of correlation which is used to

explore the predictive ability of a set of independent variables on one continuous

dependent variable. In addition, it is also used to test the predictive power of independent

variables and to assess the relative contribution of each individual variable against

dependent variable.

In analyzing the data, a hierarchical moderated regression analysis in three steps or three

models will be used. Model 1 regress the dependent variables on control variables only.

Model 2 includes control variables plus hypothesized main effects. Lastly, Model 3

includes variables in Model 2 plus the hypothesized interaction term, i.e., customer

complaints.

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In the meantime, collinearity test among the variables is also conducted by way of

calculating the variance inflation factor (VIF) for each of the regression coefficients.

Overall, calculation of VIP ranged from the lowest of 1.072 to the highest of 7.925.

These results are well below the cutoff figure of 10 suggested by Neter et al. (1985).

One tail test for significance for the hypothesized main and interaction effects was

applied to reflect the direction of either a positive or a negative effect. Besides, the

unstandardized coefficients and the corresponding t-value are reported as these results

neither affected by change in mean or zero points of the variables nor by the addition of

arbitrary constant to the variables in the model (Allison, 1977).

4.5.1 Job Motivation

The hierarchical moderated regression result for dependent variable, job motivation is

illustrated in Appendix 4.12.

4.5.1.1 Model 1

Model 1 reported that 2 of the 8 control variables are found to be significantly related to

job motivation. Job security (β = .109) and job routinization (β = .326) are positively and

significantly related to job motivation. By comparing the beta values, it is discovered that

job routinization has greater unique contribution towards job motivation although job

security also made statistically significant contribution. Other variables are all reported as

insignificantly related to job motivation. Nevertheless, the model explains 16.9 percent of

the variance.

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4.5.1.2 Model 2

Model 2 in Appendix 4.12 on the other hand illustrated that organizational support is

positively and significantly related to job motivation with β = .142 and p< 0.05. This

result supports Hypothesis 1 as below.

Hypothesis 1:

There will be a positive relationship between organizational support and job motivation.

In the meantime, Model 2 also reported that supervisory support (β = .388 and P<0.05) is

also found to be positively and significantly related to job motivation. Consequently,

Hypothesis 3 is supported.

Hypothesis 3:

There will be a positive, direct relationship between supervisory support and job

motivation.

With the higher value of beta, supervisory support makes stronger unique contribution in

explaining job motivation than organizational support.

In the meantime, the customer complaint also reflects significant negative relationship to

job motivation with β=-.137 and p<0.05. However, customer complaint has less unique

contribution as compared to supervisory support and organizational support.

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There is not much change on the control variables. With the hypothesized main effects,

Model 2 explains 30.8 percent of variance in job motivation, an increase of R2 by .139 or

13.9 percent.

4.5.1.3 Model 3

Model 3 includes interaction items in the regression. However, the model did not cause a

significant change in explanatory power of Model 3 over Model 2. ΔR2 only increased by

.007 with overall R2 improved to .315. Indeed, Model 3 explains 31.5 percent of variance

in job motivation.

The interaction effects of both organizational support and supervisory support and

customer complaint are reported to be insignificantly related to job motivation. The result

show p>.05 and therefore the Hypotheses H6a and H6c are not supported.

Hypothesis 6a:

The positive relationship between organization support and job motivation will be

diminished as the number of customer complaints increase.

Hypothesis 6c:

The positive relationship between supervisory support and job motivation will increase as

the number of customer complaints increases.

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4.5.2 Commitment to Customer Service

The hierarchical moderated regression result for dependent variable, commitment to

customer service is appended in Appendix 4.13.

4.5.2.1 Model 1

Model 1 explains 25.5 percent of variance in commitment to customer service. 3 out of 8

control variables are reported as significantly related to commitment to customer service.

Role ambiguity (β = .395), team orientation (β = .367) and job routinization (β = .253)

are positively and significantly related to commitment to customer service. Other

variables are all reported as insignificantly related to commitment to customer service.

By comparing the respective beta value, role ambiguity has the greatest unique

contribution on commitment to customer service, followed by team orientation and job

routinization.

4.5.2.2 Model 2

Model 2 reports that organizational support is positively and significantly related to

commitment to customer service with β = .185 and p<0.05. This result supports

Hypothesis 2 as below.

Hypothesis 2:

There will be a positive direct relationship between organizational support and

commitment to customer service.

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At the same time, supervisory support also reported to be positively and significantly

related to commitment to customer service. The β value is .163 with p<0.05. Hence,

Hypothesis 4 is supported.

Hypothesis 4:

There will be a positive, direct relationship between supervisory support and commitment

to customer service.

Similar to independent variable, job motivation, the result reflects that job motivation is

positively and significantly related to commitment to customer service with β = .192 and

p<0.05. Consequently, Hypothesis 5 is supported.

Hypothesis 5:

There will be a positive, direct relationship between job motivation and commitment to

customer service.

With the hypothesized effect, Model 2 explains 31.7 percent of the variance in

commitment to customer service, an increase of 6.2 percent as compared to Model 1

illustrated earlier on. Job motivation is the strongest unique contribution to commitment

to customer service while supervisory support made less of a contribution despite that it

remains statistically a significant contribution.

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4.5.2.3 Model 3

With the interaction items in the regression, Model 3 does not reflect significant change

in explanatory power as compared to Model 2. Overall R2 improved to .321 with ΔR2

increased by .005 only. Model 3 explains 32.1 percent of variance in commitment to

customer service.

Similarly for job motivation model under section 4.5.1.3, the interaction effects of both

organizational support and supervisory support and customer complaints are reported to

be insignificantly related to commitment to customer service. The findings show p>.05

and therefore the Hypotheses H6b and H6d are not supported.

Hypothesis 6b:

The positive relationship between organizational support and commitment to customer

service will be diminished as the number of customer complaints increases.

Hypothesis 6d:

The positive relationship between supervisory support and commitment to customer

service will increase as the number of customer complaints increase.

4.6 T-Test (Comparison of internal Marketing between Local Banks and Foreign

Banks)

T-test is commonly used where there are two groups of data, in this study, refers to local

banks and foreign banks category, and the comparison required in term of the mean score

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on some continuous variables. As the ‘independent variable’ in the t-test is two different

groups of sample, independent sample t-test is applied in analyzing the data.

The descriptive statistic of the sample is illustrated in Table 4.7.

Table 4.7

Descriptive Statistics on T-test

Group Statistics

Employment N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean

Local Bank 200 9.39 1.959 .139Organization Support

Foreign Bank 210 10.20 2.167 .150

Local Bank 200 10.9600 1.95898 .13852supervisory Support

Foreign Bank 210 10.8190 2.24687 .15505

With N=200, the means for local banks are organizational support (9.39) and supervisory

support (10.96) with the standard deviation of 1.96 and 1.96 respectively. On the other

hand, the means for foreign bank (N=210) are organizational support (10.20) and

supervisory support (10.819). The standard deviations for foreign banks are

organizational support (2.17) and supervisory support (2.25). All standard deviation are

lower than the mean, which indicate satisfactory data collection.

The t-test result is appended in Appendix 4.14. The Levene’s test reveals that the

variances for the two groups are not the same (p < .05) for organizational support and

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supervisory support. In other words, there is a significant difference in the mean scores

between local banks and foreign banks.

Further examination of the result indicates that there is a significant difference in the

mean scores on organizational support for the two groups of variables with Sig. (2 tailed)

< 0.05. However, there is no statistically significant difference (Sig. (2 tailed) < 0.05) in

the mean scores on supervisory support between two groups of variables.

The effect size statistics provided an indication of the magnitude of the difference

between the two groups. The most commonly used effect size statistic method is ‘eta

squared’ introduced by Cohen (1988). According to Cohan (1988), value of eta squared

could be interpreted in the following manner:

If Eta Squared = .01, the effect size is small

If Eta Squared = .06, the effect size is moderate

If Eta Squared = .14, the effect size is large

The eta squared for organizational support is 0.04, which express as percentage, only 4

percent of the variance in organizational support is explained by the two groups (local

banks vs foreign banks). The effect is deemed to be moderate.

The result reveals that a significant difference appeared on organizational support

variable between local banks and foreign banks. No significant difference on supervisory

support was reported.

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4.7 Summary

It is therefore confirmed that the results are supporting Hypothesis 1 to Hypothesis 5 in

some extent. Relational internal marketing has proven to be positively related to both job

motivation and commitment to customer service. However, the Hypotheses 6a to 6d are

rejected in view that the results do not reflect any significant findings. It is further

discovered that a significant difference exists on organizational support element between

local banks and foreign banks. Conclusion and recommendation discussion in the next

chapter will be based on the results drawn from this study.

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CHAPTER 5:

CONCLUSION AND

RECOMMENDATIONS

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5.0 Introduction

After discussion of the results of the study, it is imperative to draw a conclusion of the

overall research and discuss the implications of the study towards today’s banking

industry. This chapter therefore concludes the study of the relationship between internal

marketing and job motivation as well as commitment to customer services and the

mediating impact of customer complaints on these relationships. Furthermore, the

discussion also covers the limitations of the study and the room of improvement and

suggestion for future research purpose.

5.1 Summary and Conclusion

This research first examines the definition of internal marketing and discusses the past

literature with regards to this topic. Subsequently the paper explores the two areas of

internal marketing, which are organizational support and supervisory support in the

banking industry and underlying its impact towards the employees’ job motivation and

commitment to customer service. A framework for conceptualizing internal marketing

and its link towards employees’ job motivation and commitment to customer service is

therefore developed. Thereafter, the mediating impact of customer complaints on the

effort of internal marketing is tested. The next session of the data analysis is to identify

any differences of internal marketing effort between local and foreign banks operating in

Malaysia. Based on the empirical analysis, the findings are discussed as below.

Consequently, the research questions will be answered based on the findings obtained.

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5.1.1 Job Motivation in Response to Internal Marketing

Employees perceive significant relationship between job motivation and the internal

marketing effort. Employees’ sense of motivation are strongly and positively related to

both organizational and supervisory supports. Employees are performing better on the

works assigned when they observe that organization cares about their welfare and

understand their problems (Eisenberger et al., 1990). Similarly, when employees feel that

their supervisors are willing to listen to their work related problems, they are more

willing to involve personally in the work (Burns and Otte, 1999). In addition, employees

build their interest on the job assigned if they can rely on the organization and supervisor

when the tasks getting difficult. This result is consistent with the findings in the study

conducted by Bell et al. (2004).

5.1.2 Commitment to Customer Service in Response to Internal Marketing

It is noted that there is a significant and positive contribution of internal marketing

towards the level of customer services to their customers. The same finding is also

discovered by Bell et al. (2004). Employees are more committed to deliver advanced

service to their customers when they sense organizational and supervisory support which

are rendered to them (Allen and Meyer, 1990). With the support, employees are much

more willing to improve the quality of customer services and share their ideas and

suggestions all the times (Caruna and Calleya, 1998). Furthermore, employees are

prepared to contribute their extra effort so long as the customers felt delighted. The

customer service is beyond any personal feeling all the times.

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5.1.3 Commitment to Customer Service in Response to Job Motivation

Employees who felt highly motivated, reward the organization by way of great

commitment to customer service. Therefore, any initiative to improve the employee

satisfaction will lead to increase of the level of customer oriented services. Furthermore,

motivated employees will engage diligently and conscientiously in their ascribed work

behaviors. This positive relationship is also reported in numerous literatures (such as Bell

et al., 2004; Bowen et al., 1999; George, 1990 & Liden and Graen, 1980).

5.1.4 The Mediating Role of Customer Complaints on the Job Motivation

Despite the past literatures proposing that customer complaint could negatively affect the

relationship between job motivation and organizational support, the study does not reflect

significant finding on this. The mediation impact of customer complaints is deemed

insignificant given that the variance incurred is minimal. Likewise, the study also fails to

identify any significant impact of customer complaint towards the positive relationship

between job motivation and supervisory support.

5.1.5 The Mediating Role of Customer Complaints on the Commitment to

Customer Service

At the same time, the mediating role of customer complaint on the commitment to

customer service is immaterial as the result does not reflect any significant finding on

this. The research does not discover any significant influence of the customer complaint

towards the relationship between commitment to customer service and organizational

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support. Likewise, no significant impact against the relationship between commitment to

customer service and supervisory support was revealed.

5.1.6 Difference of Internal Marketing between Local Bank and Foreign Bank

It is discovered that both local banks and foreign banks have implemented a series of

internal marketing strategy aimed to boost staff performance. Internal marketing

enhances the competitive advantage of an organization through market orientation and

improved customer service to derive higher customer satisfaction and loyalty (Van

Egeren and O’connor, 1998). There is no significant difference in the supervisory support

rendered to employees from both local and foreign banks. However, a significant

difference between local banks and foreign banks is reported in organizational support.

The different management mechanism and operation lead to different standard of

organizational support of which the effect is deemed to be moderate. This result is

consistent to the finding conducted by Culpan et al. (2007).

5.2 Limitations

This study has some limitations. Firstly, the sample was drawn from the banking

industry. As the findings from this study enable us to explore the issue in the Malaysian

banking industry, therefore the application of the findings is limited to the industry. The

nature of banking operation and management practice could be different from other

industries. The finding therefore could be different as the customer complaints and

customer satisfaction rate vary significantly across industries (Gronholdt et al., 2000).

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Another limitation relates to the sample of study. The finding of this study could not be

generalized for all age group. As indicated in chapter 4, the respondents of this study are

majority ranged between 21 to 40 years old. The aging population such as those aged 41

years old and above should be looked into in view that this group of respondents have the

widest working experience and normally hold the senior position in their respective

organizations. The respondents from senior manager level and above are deemed to be

insignificant (only 2% of total respondents) in this study. This population could vary the

comparison result between local and foreign banks as the parent company’s policy is

usually dominated by upper level employees (Tinsley and DiPrete, 2001).

In addition, the limitation is also associated to the measure of customer complaints used

in the study. The study cannot determine which aspect of the organization the complaints

were directed. The complaints could be related to service quality, customer services,

process delays or insufficient assistance. An employee will be more affected by

complaints at the areas which is within his control such as personal characteristics rather

than product related or bank-wide issues that are beyond his responsibilities. The

employee’s area of control when faced with customer complaints is not part of the scope

of the study. This could be part of the reasons contributing to the insignificant findings on

the moderating role of customer complaints on job motivation and commitment to

customer services.

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5.3 Suggestion for Future Research

A conceptual framework of internal marketing and employee’s job motivation and

commitment to customer service has been developed and illustrated in this study.

However, it is noticed that similar research is still limited in Malaysia and therefore

future researches are very much welcomed. It is further suggested that future research

could modify, verify or elaborate the current framework to gauge different interesting

findings or to suit different type of industries. In addition, future study could be built on

larger sample size. Also, it is also recommended for a specific research to be conducted

against a particular banking institution to gauge deeper understanding on the internal

marketing impacts towards the employees’ performance at organizational level.

Customer complaint is one of the key variables in the study. Based on the finding

obtained from this study, it is essential for future study to re-look and explore the relevant

framework. Future research might segregate between the nature of customer complaints

and its effects. Those complaints beyond the employee’s control could have different

implications to complaints attributable to individual employee. The way in which

complaints filter into organization and the nature of the complainant might also provide

some additional insight for future study. Besides, future study might also consider

additional factor such as commitment, trust and information sharing and other

psychological contact between the employees and their organization.

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5.4 Management Implications

The study provides some insights for managers in the banking industry. The variables for

both independent variables and control variables offer a guide to manager on the way to

boost the staff performance particularly in customer service area. Since the customer

service is paramount in the banking industry to compete in today’s market, any effort to

enhance the customer service will definitely enhance the competitiveness of the

company.

The study identified several factors that are positively related to employees job

motivation. As discussed in Chapter 2, motivation of high quality personnel is one of the

critical factors in the services industry (Thompson et al., 1978) and greater job motivation

positively leads to greater customer satisfaction (Burnthorne et al., 2005). Job security

and job routinization significantly influence the employees’ job motivation. Besides, both

organizational and supervisory supports are crucial elements to improve employees’ job

motivation. On the hand, customer complaints will demoralize and affect the employees’

spirit in performing their job.

In the meantime, the factors that contribute significantly towards the employees’

commitment to customer service are also identified. These variables are role ambiguity,

team orientation, job routinization, organizational support, supervisory support and job

motivation. The high commitment to customer service would lead to improvement of

customers’ relationship, retention of customers and complement marketing activities at

the least cost (Ballantyne, 2003).

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Organizational support is a crucial element to motivate the employees and to boost the

employees’ commitment to customer service. Banks’ employees are very much

concerned on their welfare and rely heavily on the organization to gain such support.

Therefore, instead of viewing the employees’ benefits as the cost and expenses to the

organization, the management of the banking industry should take the opportunity to

inspire employees’ commitment via offering better benefits. The cost-benefit analysis is

to be conducted to explore the advantages that could be earned by the organization

arising from this area. Public Bank Berhad has taken the advanced step recently by

reviewing and improving the benefits offered to its employees. Consequently, the bank is

becoming the prime choice of employment among other banks.

In the meantime, the study also reveals that employees attached with foreign banks

perceive greater organizational support from their respective companies as compared to

those attached with local banks. This result indirectly illustrates that there are extra

challenge for local banks to achieve the same or better standard of organizational support

than foreign banks. Generally, employees perceive better benefits are being offered by

foreign banks than local banks. People commonly believe that foreign banks offer higher

basic pay as compared to local banks. Those areas for improvement should be carefully

studied and wisely recommended and implemented.

The role of supervisors in influencing the level of customer services is once again proven

in this study. Subordinates like to share their work-related problems with their respective

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supervisors. Today, the function of supervisors is not limited to point of referrer or master

of certain fields, instead all supervisors are acting as motivators and counselors at the

same time. This is very important especially when things get difficult at work.

Supervisors who are unable to offer immediate support and solution will be deemed

ineffective in leading the team, hence demoralizing the subordinates. Although staff

benefit is out of the jurisdiction of supervisor, employees remain concerned on the

support from their supervisors in this area. Occasionally, employees expect their

supervisor to fight for them for any better bonuses and increment. Also, supervisor’s keen

consideration of their application is very much valued by the employees.

Nevertheless, customer complaint has a negative impact on employees’ job motivation.

With the huge portfolio carried by each employee, it is inevitable that not all customer

services fulfilled the customer’s satisfaction. Furthermore, different customers have

different expectations, it is very difficult for bank employees to meet all needs based on a

standard operation procedure. In this aspect, the bank should form a formal complaints

channel and handle each complaint fairly and justifiably. The management should

distinguish the complaints in accordance to the nature of complaints and type of

complainant and diagnose the problems superlatively.

Employees value job security in the banking industry and are confident that they could

continue their service with their respective organization. Although the banking sector in

Malaysia is governed by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the government is rendering

its ‘protections’ on the industry all the times, however it remains the responsibilities of

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managers to survive the business and ensure the company is continuously profitable. To

motivate the employees, managers should ensure the current employment offered to

employees is secured and employees are always offered with other alternative if the

current job is eliminated. Furthermore, employees are proud to be attached to

organization which sustain and improve its performance all the times.

In the meantime, to make the job more interesting, managers should avoid repetition of

duties assigned to the staff. Employees in banking industry prefer varieties of jobs and

appreciates the opportunity to do different tasks. Employees treasure the trust rendered to

them through assigning new challenges to them. In the context of customer service, front

liners should be given the consideration to handle different area of services such as

deposits, loan or back office works. Also, employees will be much happier to handle

different kind of customers and portfolios.

All the local banking institutions in Malaysia are listed in Bursa Malaysia main board.

These organizations are huge in both capital and resources. Therefore, strong team work

is critical for the effectiveness and efficiency of daily operations. Team orientation must

exist among the employees to achieve excellence in customer service. In addition, the

cross functional teamwork spirit must be cultivated within the organization. To meet this

benchmark, the common vision of the company must not only be made known to each

and every employee but the employees’ commitment and support must be gained by

management. With such commitment, the performance will undoubtedly improve.

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To inspire excellence in customer services, it is important to have a clear understanding

of the roles played by each individual in the organization. Job distribution and

segregation must be properly managed and executed. Employees should be briefed on

their respective responsibilities and the relevant key performance indicators. In addition,

the instructions given should be clear and precise so that it could be properly and

effectively implemented. The management’s expectation should be highlighted and made

clear upfront or in the beginning of the performance year to avoid any ambiguity and

distress during the performance appraisal session.

5.5 Summary

This study explores the role of internal marketing towards the competitiveness in the

banking industry in Malaysia. Through the literature in this area, the conceptual

framework is developed and tested through empirical analysis. The findings from this

study reveal significant impact of internal marketing towards the level of customer

service. It is proven that internal marketing has positive impact on employees’ job

motivation and commitment to customer services.

Despite the argument of past literatures, this study does not find any significant

interaction impact of customer complaints towards both job motivation and commitment

to customer service. At the same time, there is significance different between local and

foreign banks on internal marketing aspect particularly on organizational support as

explained in this study.

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From the management’s point of view, this study identifies various areas that could be

improved to boost the company’s competitive advantages. In additional to relational

internal marketing factors, other variables like teamwork, job routinization, job ambiguity

and job security also significantly impact the level of customer service. Nevertheless,

future research is needed to further test the stability of the above instruments. In this way,

an objective measure of evaluating internal marketing and employees’ performance will

finally be produced, a fact that will be of assistance not only to academicians but also to

professionals.

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Appendix 4.1: Total Years of Banking Employment Experience

Total Experience Years Frequency Percent

1 - 5 176 43 6 - 10 78 19 11 - 15 92 22 16 - 20 30 7 21 – 25 20 5 26 - 30 14 4 Total 410 100 Appendix 4.2: Years of Experience with Current Employer

Current Experience Years Frequency Percent

1 – 5 237 58 6 – 10 58 14 11 – 15 69 17 16 – 20 20 5 21 – 25 14 3 26 – 30 12 3 Total 410 100

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Appendix 4.3: Descriptive Statistics for All Variables N Mean Std. Deviation Skewness Kurtosis Items Statistic Statistic Statistic Statistic Std. Error Statistic Std. ErrorOrganizational Support 1 410 3.35 .799 -.473 .121 -.019 .240Organizational support 2 410 3.37 .832 -.669 .121 .441 .240Organizational Support 3 410 3.09 .776 -.540 .121 .499 .240Supervisory Support 1 410 3.51 .837 -.642 .121 .442 .240Supervisory Support 2 410 3.74 .718 -.848 .121 1.206 .240Supervisory Support 3 410 3.63 .802 -.843 .121 .624 .240Job Motivation 1 410 3.02 .938 -.218 .121 -.237 .240Job Motivation 2 410 2.95 .869 -.211 .121 -.391 .240Job Motivation 3 410 3.35 .840 -.427 .121 .217 .240Customer Service 1 410 3.98 .688 -.782 .121 1.922 .240Customer Service 2 410 3.78 .726 -.864 .121 1.714 .240Customer Service 3 410 3.60 .806 -.456 .121 .292 .240Customer Service 4 410 3.93 .759 -.753 .121 1.450 .240Customer Service 5 410 3.83 .741 -.593 .121 .836 .240Coworker Support 1 410 3.64 .763 -.693 .121 .817 .240Coworker Support 2 410 3.72 .737 -.759 .121 1.301 .240Coworker Support 3 410 3.66 .821 -.800 .121 1.083 .240Team Orientation 1 410 3.69 .779 -.766 .121 1.209 .240Team Orientation 2 410 3.52 .807 -.661 .121 1.000 .240Team Orientation 3 410 3.42 .670 -.437 .121 .750 .240Team Orientation 4 410 3.32 .829 -.700 .121 .738 .240Team Orientation 5 410 3.24 .731 -.103 .121 .221 .240Job Routinization 1 410 3.46 .930 -.630 .121 -.019 .240Job Routinization 2 410 3.51 .915 -.306 .121 -.453 .240Job Routinization 3 410 3.40 .926 -.592 .121 .013 .240Promotion Opportunity 1 410 3.09 .904 -.423 .121 -.233 .240Promotion Opportunity 2 410 3.25 .909 -.169 .121 .023 .240Promotion Opportunity 3 410 3.25 .743 -.518 .121 .393 .240Promotion Opportunity 4 410 3.34 .953 -.445 .121 -.030 .240Distributive Justice 1 410 3.11 .929 -.482 .121 -.162 .240Distributive Justine 2 410 3.18 .878 -.655 .121 .133 .240Distributive Justice 3 410 3.14 .840 -.412 .121 .361 .240Role Ambiguity 1 410 4.06 .610 -.552 .121 1.614 .240Role Ambiguity 2 410 4.02 .663 -.628 .121 1.205 .240Role Ambiguity 3 410 3.77 .748 -.579 .121 .687 .240Job Autonomy 1 410 3.52 .831 -.558 .121 .510 .240Job Autonomy 2 410 3.24 .860 -.388 .121 -.061 .240Job Autonomy 3 410 3.28 .860 -.522 .121 -.054 .240Job Security 1 410 3.40 .843 -.570 .121 .761 .240Job Security 2 410 3.27 .851 -.400 .121 -.115 .240Job Security 3 410 3.25 .864 -.423 .121 .343 .240Resource Adequacy 1 410 3.38 .834 -.899 .121 .821 .240Resource Adequacy 2 410 3.54 .782 -.602 .121 .679 .240Resource Adequacy 3 410 3.27 .762 -.505 .121 .651 .240Customer Complaint 410 0.84 0.08 1.931 .121 2.743 .240

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Appendix 4.4 : Normality Test for All Variables

Tests of Normality

Kolmogorov-Smirnova Shapiro-Wilk

Statistic df Sig. Statistic df Sig. Organizational Support .146 410 .000 .948 410 .000Supervisory Support .203 410 .000 .908 410 .000Job Motivation .145 410 .000 .963 410 .000Customer Service .171 410 .000 .930 410 .000Coworker Support .245 410 .000 .893 410 .000Team Orientation .103 410 .000 .949 410 .000Job Routinization .126 410 .000 .966 410 .000Promotion Opportunity .151 410 .000 .940 410 .000Distributive Justice .197 410 .000 .928 410 .000Role Ambiguity .226 410 .000 .904 410 .000Job Autonomy .120 410 .000 .954 410 .000Job Security .130 410 .000 .958 410 .000Resource Adequacy .144 410 .000 .923 410 .000Customer Complaint .426 410 .000 .589 410 .000a. Lilliefors Significance Correction

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Appendix 4.6 Reliability of Scale – Total Variance Explained

Total Variance Explained

Initial Eigenvalues Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings

Rotation Sums of Squared

Loadingsa Component Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total 1 4.561 32.576 32.576 4.561 32.576 32.576 4.0002 1.238 8.844 41.420 1.238 8.844 41.420 1.2863 1.165 8.322 49.741 1.165 8.322 49.741 2.8604 1.118 7.989 57.730 1.118 7.989 57.730 1.2575 .863 6.168 63.898 6 .854 6.099 69.998 7 .783 5.595 75.593 8 .692 4.945 80.537 9 .636 4.543 85.080 10 .525 3.750 88.830 11 .509 3.637 92.467 12 .424 3.030 95.497 13 .360 2.574 98.071 14 .270 1.929 100.000 Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. a. When components are correlated, sums of squared loadings cannot be added to obtain a total variance.

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Appendix 4.7 Reliability of Scale (Two-Factor) – Total Variance Explained

Total Variance Explained

Initial Eigenvalues Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings

Rotation Sums of Squared

Loadingsa Component Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total 1 4.561 32.576 32.576 4.561 32.576 32.576 4.4652 1.238 8.844 41.420 1.238 8.844 41.420 1.6823 1.165 8.322 49.741 4 1.118 7.989 57.730 5 .863 6.168 63.898 6 .854 6.099 69.998 7 .783 5.595 75.593 8 .692 4.945 80.537 9 .636 4.543 85.080 10 .525 3.750 88.830 11 .509 3.637 92.467 12 .424 3.030 95.497 13 .360 2.574 98.071 14 .270 1.929 100.000 Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. a. When components are correlated, sums of squared loadings cannot be added to obtain a total variance.

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Appendix 4.8 Reliability of Scale (Two-Factor) - Pattern Matrix and Structure Matrix

Pattern Matrixa

Component

1 2 Organizational Support .752 Resource Adequacy .730 Supervisory Support .721 Distributive Justice .708 Team Orientation .696 Promotion Opportunity .645 Job Motivation .539 Coworker Support .505 .336Customer Service .485 Job Security .437 Job Autonomy .379 Role Ambiguity .580

Customer Complaint .561

Job Routinization .333 .547Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization. a. Rotation converged in 9 iterations.

Structure Matrix

Component

1 2 Resource Adequacy .745 Organizational Support .727 Team Orientation .717 Supervisory Support .715 Distributive Justice .648 Promotion Opportunity .606 Coworker Support .573 .439Job Motivation .535 Customer Service .534 .338Job Security .492 .360Job Autonomy .421 Job Routinization .444 .615Role Ambiguity .599

Customer Complaint .522

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization.

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Appendix 4.9 Reliability of Scale (Two-Factor) – Communalities of All Variables

Communalities

Initial Extraction Organizational Support 1.000 .543Supervisory Support 1.000 .512Job Motivation 1.000 .301Customer Service 1.000 .340Coworker Support 1.000 .437Team Orientation 1.000 .524Job Routinization 1.000 .484Promotion Opportunity 1.000 .402Distributive Justice 1.000 .503Role Ambiguity 1.000 .368Job Autonomy 1.000 .217Job Security 1.000 .313Resource Adequacy 1.000 .561Customer Complaint 1.000 .307Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

115

Appendix 4.10 Reliability of Scale – Communalities of All Questionnaire Items

Communalities Initial Extraction Organization Support 1 1.000 .425Organization support 2 1.000 .388Organization Support 3 1.000 .374Supervisory Support 1 1.000 .412Supervisory Support 2 1.000 .426Supervisory Support 3 1.000 .404Job Motivation 1 1.000 .304Job Motivation 2 1.000 .370Job Motivation 3 1.000 .387Customer Service 1 1.000 .390Customer Service 2 1.000 .315Customer Service 3 1.000 .313Customer Service 4 1.000 .429Customer Service 5 1.000 .505Coworker Support 1 1.000 .337Coworker Support 2 1.000 .413Coworker Support 3 1.000 .332Team Orientation 1 1.000 .352Team Orientation 2 1.000 .430Team Orientation 3 1.000 .217Team Orientation 4 1.000 .408Team Orientation 5 1.000 .313Job Routinization 1 1.000 .300Job Routinization 2 1.000 .074Job Routinization 3 1.000 .353Promotion Opportunity 1 1.000 .329Promotion Opportunity 2 1.000 .387Promotion Opportunity 3 1.000 .326Promotion Opportunity 4 1.000 .303Distributive Justice 1 1.000 .476Distributive Justine 2 1.000 .469Distributive Justice 3 1.000 .461Role Ambiguity 1 1.000 .427Role Ambiguity 2 1.000 .387Role Ambiguity 3 1.000 .327Job Autonomy 1 1.000 .096Job Autonomy 2 1.000 .155Job Autonomy 3 1.000 .198Job Security 1 1.000 .315Job Security 2 1.000 .316Job Security 3 1.000 .318Resource Adequacy 1 1.000 .279Resource Adequacy 2 1.000 .362Resource Adequacy 3 1.000 .496Customer Complaint 1.000 .011Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

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Appendix 4.12: Hierarchical Moderated Regression Analysis for Dependent Variable – Job Motivation Model B t-Value Sig. VIF

(Constant) 3.262 3.503 .001 Coworker Support -.007 -.123 .902 1.534 Promotion Opportunity -.007 -.153 .879 1.460 R2 =.169 Distributive Justice .065 1.376 .170 1.419 F=10.19Role Ambiguity .050 .814 .416 1.099 p<0.05Job Security .109 2.006 .046 1.271 Team Orientation .045 .799 .425 1.994 Job Routinization .326 4.646 .000 1.323

1

Resource Adequacy .158 1.656 .098 1.748 (Constant) 1.926 2.213 .027 Coworker Support -.078 -1.461 .145 1.643 Promotion Opportunity -.014 -.310 .757 1.467 R2=.308Distributive Justice -.023 -.513 .609 1.516 F=16.10Role Ambiguity .050 .888 .375 1.101 p<0.05Job Security .135 2.652 .008 1.324 Team Orientation -.004 -.069 .945 2.044 ΔR2=.139Job Routinization .325 4.994 .000 1.349 ΔF=26.646Resource Adequacy -.134 -1.411 .159 2.051 Organizational Support .142 2.548 .011 1.715 Supervisory Support .388 6.645 .000 1.888

2

Customer Complaint -.137 -3.832 .000 1.072 (Constant) 2.096 2.269 .024 Coworker Support -.061 -1.124 .262 1.705 Promotion Opportunity -.009 -.204 .839 1.473 R2=.315Distributive Justice -.027 -.601 .548 1.525 F=14.034Role Ambiguity .021 .359 .719 1.171 p<0.05Job Security .152 2.963 .003 1.362 Team Orientation -.022 -.406 .685 2.120 ΔR2=.007Job Routinization .317 4.848 .000 1.374 ΔF=2.157Resource Adequacy -.113 -1.164 .245 2.162 Organizational Support .185 3.076 .002 2.016 Supervisory Support .344 5.472 .000 2.200

3

Customer Complaint -.201 -.844 .399 7.839 Organizational Support

x Customer Complaint -.040 -1.984 .158 7.467

Supervisory Support x Customer Complaint .041 1.649 .100 7.046

a. Dependent Variable: Job Motivation

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Appendix 4.13: Hierarchical Moderated Regression Analysis for Dependent Variable – Commitment to Customer Service Model B t-Value Sig. VIF

(Constant) 6.904 5.810 .000 Coworker Support -.018 -.250 .802 1.534 Promotion Opportunity .036 .580 .562 1.460 R2 =.255 Distributive Justice .102 1.696 .091 1.419 F=17.16Role Ambiguity .395 5.081 .000 1.099 p<0.05Job Security -.040 -.584 .559 1.271 Team Orientation .367 5.071 .000 1.994 Job Routinization .253 2.820 .005 1.323

1

Resource Adequacy -.012 -.099 .921 1.748 (Constant) 5.346 4.552 .000 Coworker Support -.066 -.923 .357 1.652 Promotion Opportunity .026 .438 .662 1.468 R2=.317Distributive Justice .055 .919 .359 1.517 F=15.334Role Ambiguity .391 5.217 .000 1.103 p<0.05Job Security -.038 -.554 .580 1.348 Team Orientation .325 4.601 .000 2.044 ΔR2=.062Job Routinization .154 1.717 .087 1.434 ΔF=8.960Resource Adequacy -.230 -1.809 .071 2.061 Organizational Support .185 2.452 .015 1.743 Supervisory Support .163 1.974 .049 2.097 Job Motivation .192 2.856 .005 1.445

2

Customer Complaint .054 1.113 .266 1.111 (Constant) 5.254 4.205 .000 Coworker Support -.086 -1.170 .243 1.710 Promotion Opportunity .022 .367 .714 1.474 R2=.321Distributive Justice .059 .973 .331 1.526 F=13.353Role Ambiguity .420 5.444 .000 1.171 p<0.05Job Security -.057 -.822 .412 1.392 Team Orientation .345 4.808 .000 2.121 ΔR2=.005Job Routinization .161 1.783 .075 1.456 ΔF=.1.319Resource Adequacy -.257 -1.971 .049 2.169 Organizational Support .134 1.639 .102 2.065 Supervisory Support .201 2.293 .022 2.366 Job Motivation .203 3.009 .003 1.461 Customer Complaint .041 .128 .898 7.925 Organizational Support x Customer Complaint .043 1.609 .108 7.483

3

Supervisory Support x Customer Complaint -.038 -1.117 .265 7.153

a. Dependent Variable: Customer Service

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Appendix 4.14: T-Test for Local Bank & Foreign Bank

Independent Samples Test

Levene's Test for Equality of Variances t-test for Equality of Means

95% Confidence Interval of the

Difference F Sig. t df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Mean Difference

Std. Error Difference Lower Upper

Equal variances assumed

4.951 .027 -3.964 408 .000 -.810 .204 -1.212 -.408Organization Support

Equal variances not assumed

-3.974 406.899 .000 -.810 .204 -1.211 -.409

Equal variances assumed

4.006 .046 .676 408 .500 .14095 .20861 -.26913 .55103supervisory Support

Equal variances not assumed

.678 404.881 .498 .14095 .20791 -.26777 .54968

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Appendix 4.5: Factor Analysis - Inter-Item Correlation Matrix

Correlation Matrix 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Organizational Support

Supervisory Support .555

Job Motivation .363 .438

Customer Service .372 .372 .334

Coworker Support .302 .433 .190 .265

Team Orientation .437 .427 .248 .391 .568

Job Routinization .216 .186 .287 .300 .335 .309

Promotion Opportunity .342 .275 .192 .248 .238 .416 .255

Distributive Justice .404 .372 .220 .238 .268 .316 .221 .437

Role Ambiguity .088 .143 .128 .286 .167 .109 .231 .037 .054

Job Autonomy .213 .221 .133 .078 .197 .248 .271 .296 .210 .137

Job Security .270 .164 .254 .181 .276 .296 .286 .212 .238 .196 .331

Resource Adequacy .495 .510 .269 .286 .375 .513 .302 .332 .423 .245 .302 .462

Customer Complaint .031 .074 -.107 .030 .125 -.006 .141 -.041 -.095 -.011 .016 -.029 -.043

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Appendix 4.11: Reliability of Scale - Pearson Correlation Matrix

Pearson Correlation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Organizational Support

Supervisory Support .555

Job Motivation .363 .438

Customer Service .372 .372 .334

Coworker Support .302 .433 .190 .265

Team Orientation .437 .427 .248 .391 .568

Job Routinization .216 .186 .287 .300 .335 .309

Promotion Opportunity .342 .275 .192 .248 .238 .416 .255

Distributive Justice .404 .372 .220 .238 .268 .316 .221 .437

Role Ambiguity .088 .143 .128 .286 .167 .109 .231 .037 .054

Job Security .270 .164 .254 .181 .276 .296 .286 .212 .238 .196

Resource Adequacy .495 .510 .269 .286 .375 .513 .302 .332 .423 .245 .462

Customer Complaint .031 .074 -.107 .030 .125 -.006 .141 -.041 -.095 -.011 -.029 -.043

121