The Quality of Private Banking Services as Perceived by Polish Customers

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As a result of economic transformations in Poland the market for private banking services has developed dynamically for the last decades. The banks in search of advantage over their competitors have started to adopt the rules of relationship marketing, which highlight the role of the integrity of three areas; the customer service, the quality and marketing. One of the youngest and the most dynamically developing areas of bank's activities in Poland is private banking. This particular type of banking has emerged from retail banking as a result of particular characteristics and needs of target market, differing greatly from those of an average customer. The core characteristics of private banking are defined by L. Dziawgo - private banking is an individualized and complex financial and extra-financial service of wealthy customers. In a highly competitive market of private banking services the survival and success of the bank mainly depend on an ability to create long-term relations with customers, thus building their loyalty. As proved by empirical research, the first step in this process is delivering the customers high quality services, which contributes to their feeling of satisfactions. Taking into account the crucial role played by creating the quality in gaining advantage over competitors and attracitve and perspective character of still unexperienced Polish private banking market, the authors have decided to carry out research. Its target is to recognize the quality of the banks offer as proposed to wealthier individual customers. The research was carried out between 11.06 and 30.08.2008 in cooperation with the market research institute IMAS. In the research the modified method SERVPERF was applied. The basic assumption of this method is that the measurement of quality should cover only a direct measurement of a factual quality of the company as perceived by purchasers (as opposed to SERVQUAL where differences between the perceived and expected quality are measured). This method's basic assumptions developed by J.J. Cronin and S.A. Taylor in the nineties of the twentieth century have been altered due to specific chracteristic of private banking services - different questions and quality criteria were used. The following article will present the results and practical advice on the issue of the quality of services in Polish banks.