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This study aims to offers a deeper insight into bank selection of Ghanaian students so as to offer bank managers the opportunity to tailor‐measure programmes aimed at attracting and retaining customers.

The study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the problem. The “drop and pick” convenience sampling method adopted resulted in 223 completed questionnaires. The mean ranking and factor analysis methods were employed to identify the major factors that influence the respondent bank selection.

Over all, student customers consider image, attitude and behaviour of staff, core service delivery and technology‐related factors as the major issues that influence consumers' decision to open and maintain an account.

The limitation of the study relates to the student population used for the study, which limits the generalisability of the findings. The study, however, contributes to the academic knowledge of bank selection and provides insights into the critical factors considered by sample students in their bank selection decisions.

In a market where consumers respond differently to a marketing offer, market segmentation becomes a necessity and therefore differences in male and female consumers' selection criteria emanating from this study provide an excellent opportunity for the banks to adopt segmentation‐based strategies to serve the customers.

In this paper, gender and educational level provide a deeper understanding of bank selection criteria among the Ghanaian bank customers. The four constructs can be used by bank management as bases for designing marketing strategies to deliver efficient service, and engage in relationship marketing practices to attract and retain customers.

The purpose of this paper is to connect mindfulness with service quality constructs and apply the resultant framework, service‐mindful orientation (SMO), to the analysis of strategic perspectives and philosophical orientations of small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana towards service quality management.

This study employed both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods: face‐to‐face interview for the purpose of illuminating inter‐subjective discourses of quality orientation; and questionnaire method that enabled parametric testing of key variables and relationships on 60 service and manufacturing SMEs.

The paper finds conceptual synergy between conventional measures of mindfulness and service‐quality, resulting in the SMO framework. When this framework is applied to gauge strategic orientations, tensions became evident in both the conceptualisation and operationalisation. That an organisation is quality‐minded does not mean that it is quality mindful. Whilst there are subtle differences between manufacturing and service SME groups used in the study, both share a basic commonality in their muddled, cluttered and sometimes confusing approaches to service‐mindful orientation.

The concept of SMO is yet to be fully developed to deliver generalisable measures and outcomes. There is certainly a need to advance the treatment to attain theoretic saturation. Also, the sample and design of the study should be seen from the exploratory learning and may be less‐than robust for stable generalizations.

There are, potentially, far‐reaching implications arising from this paper. Conceptually, SMO is introduced, not in any taxonomical manner, but as a robust platform within which to analyse, measure and evaluate the futurism of SMEs in terms of success‐readiness and stability. Practically, the battery of measures embodied within SMO are likely to provide the fillip for internal self‐assessments of how ready an individual SME or clusters would be in facing up to both their strategic and operational challenges relating to service‐quality management.

By introducing mindfulness from the realm of cognitive science into the domain of service quality, this paper extends the theoretic and discursive dimensions of quality management.

To ascertain customers' usage level and perceptions of the image of rural community banks (RCBs) in Ghana. This research examines whether women and men differ in their levels of satisfaction and expectation about the banks' services. It also assesses the contribution of RCBs towards infrastructural development in the rural areas.

Both desk and primary research methods were employed. Face‐to‐face interviews took place in 15 bank branches in the eastern region of Ghana. Over 170 respondents consisting of 105 males and 65 females co‐operated for this study. Analyses are presented in a statistical format using mean score and t‐test.

RCBs are perceived as fairly active in rural infrastructural development, and have collaborated with NGOs to help identify, mobilise and educate rural groups in the usage and benefits of banking services. Men and women are gradually cultivating the banking culture. Both genders perceive the quality of financial advice, provision of information and service delivery as areas that need significant improvement. There are no significant differences between both genders in their perceptions and expectation of the banks services.

The sample size was limited to only one part of Ghana and may not be entirely representative.

This study provides a meaningful insight into consumer behaviour in rural banking sector and useful platform for future studies in marketing of financial services in a developing country context.

The study is unique in that it looks at a rural banking service provision in a sub‐Sahara African country, a setting that markedly differs from the traditional high street banks sectors in the developed world. The results will enable financial service providers to consider the changing needs and wants of RCBs customers.

This paper aims to explore patients' satisfaction with access to treatment in both the public and private healthcare sectors in London.

Qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to determine patients' levels of satisfaction. A semi‐structured face ‐to‐face non‐probability quota sampling and a probability sample drawn from multistage cluster sampling methods were employed.

The results revealed varying access experiences among public and private care users. Public, as opposed to private, healthcare users experience unsatisfactory outcomes in relation to service climate factors (e.g. getting attention from doctors, time taken to get appointments, access to core treatment and opening hours). Overall, while women are more disadvantaged by spatial accessibility to treatment than men, both public and private healthcare users indicate major problems in accessing healthcare despite the myriad intervention strategies aimed at ameliorating the situation in both sectors. Therefore, access‐to‐care problems are significant and need to be addressed by managers and healthcare providers in order to improve the quality of service delivery and patient satisfaction. Private care users fare better than public users in obtaining medical care at short notice, having more agreeable opening hours for treatment and getting appointments for treatment with less difficulty.

Whereas the limitation of the study was due to its small sample size, it nevertheless will stimulate insight into further academic endeavours.

Academics and practitioners will find the results very useful when making decisions about healthcare provisions and how they can best meet user/patient satisfaction.

This study is significant in drawing on the current literature on satisfaction which is usefully applied to evaluate patients' response to the quality management initiatives in the healthcare sector.

Banking in Ghana is now an intensely competitive proposition. In a competitive environment, it becomes imperative not just to attract customers, but also to design strategies aimed at maintaining these customers. Drawing on data from over 2,000 retail bank customers in Ghana, this study aims at understanding the key motivations for maintaining accounts with banks in respect of Ghanaian bank customers.

Data were collected from customers of 22 retail banks in Ghana. A two‐stage sampling technique was adopted in obtaining the sample. First, for each of the banks, two branches were randomly selected from the list of all functionally operating branches. In the second stage, customers of the selected branches were randomly intercepted in the banking halls and the survey instrument administered to them. A total of 2,000 respondents were attracted. Logistic regression modelling was employed in analysing the data.

Overall bank customers view proximity/accessibility as the most important factor in the opening and maintenance of accounts with banks in Ghana. Recommendations by friends appear to be the least important factor in Ghanaian bank consumers' decision to open and maintain a bank account in Ghana. The findings were strange to the extent that word‐of‐mouth marketing has been lauded as one of the most potent marketing communications tools in services marketing but the empirical findings from the study did not support this.

To the extent that proximity is a key factor in the opening and maintenance of bank relationships in Ghana, distribution management must be given a more strategic imperative in bank management in Ghana. Bank branches must be sited in catchment areas with the highest propensity to attract and maintain an existing profitable bank clientele.

The study is one of the few on bank marketing in Ghana that draws on a large bank consumer data set and utilizes robust statistical analysis to reach its conclusions.

Owing to increased competition resulting from a decade of deregulation in the Ghanaian banking industry, the banks find themselves faced with the task of differentiating their products as a method of attracting new customers. Aims to ascertain the characteristics looked for when Ghanaian bank customers open a bank account. The results are based on 225 multiple choice questionnaires filled in during customer interviews inside 50 bank branches. The results show that 73 per cent of account holders in Ghana are male. Ghanaian bank customers choose a bank based on understanding and high rates of interest. The banks are perceived to be conveniently located but offer slow services. Ghanaian bank customers are resistant to long‐term investment and the most effective media that best inform customers of bank services are word‐of‐mouth, radio and television.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between market orientation, learning orientation and innovation; and second, assesses the role of innovation, market orientation and learning orientation on firms’ business performance using a developing country (i.e. the Ghanaian banking domain) as a study context.

Following a nation-wide survey among senior managers of 28 banks in Ghana, five research propositions were tested using multiple linear regression analysis.

Results demonstrate that market orientation has significant association with innovation while learning orientation has significant impact on innovation. Moreover, innovation mediates the relationship between market orientation and business performance.

This study adopt the cross-sectional research design and as such acknowledge the same limitations as other cross-sectional studies.

The research will help bank executives especially in Ghana and other developing countries to appreciate these marketing variables.

Banks innovation efforts, concurrently with the development of market orientation culture and improvement in organizational learning processes must benefit bank customers and stakeholders as a whole.

The research will help banks in Ghana and other developing countries to appreciate that their innovation efforts should concurrently be in sync with the development of market orientation culture and improvement in organizational learning processes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate value co-creation processes from the focal dyad of the patient and the physician and how their experiences in the consulting room affect the value that is created.

Semi-structured interviews incorporating the critical incident technique (CIT) were conducted with 8 doctors and 24 outpatients in selected hospitals in Ghana, exploring their experiences during their encounter in the service delivery impacting on the value creating healthcare opportunities. An abductive and thematic analytical approach was used to identify 76 useable critical incidents that had clear consequences on both the outcome of the service and the service experiences of the patient.

The study reveals three critical areas needed to support the value co-creation process and respective elements or activities to be considered during the service encounter. The critical areas comprise of the social context, beliefs and perceptions, and partnership between the focal dyad. The findings also suggests that patients do not consider “getting well” as the only value that they seek, but also the total experiences they go through in the consulting room. Also some physicians find it difficult to accept the recent changes in the patients’ behaviour and attitudes, resulting in knowledge conflict that adversely affects actors’ experiences in the consulting room.

The study considered only one of the many professionals in the healthcare delivery, which may affect the true value perceptions of the patient.

The study provides service providers understanding of the processes that influence the patients’ experiences and value creation and the changing trends in the patient’s attitudes. The findings suggest a need for providers to take a holistic view of the service delivery and consider the critical areas, which could impact on the overall service outcomes.

This study extends the research on CIT to exploring the value co-creating processes in the healthcare setting. This also provides clarity in understanding the interdependence of the two actors and how this is managed as a resource in the value co-creation process at the micro level.

Market orientation is widely held as a credo for organisational success. Essentially, this means that organisations that are market oriented tend to perform better than those that are not. As a result of this logic (i.e. market orientation‐performance link), scholars from a wide array of disciplines are showing an increasing interest in fleshing out the factors that determine organisational market orientation stances. Based on a sample drawn from the UK's facilities management industry, this paper examines the impact of organisational climate factors on market orientation stances of facilities management firms. The results reveal that organisational climate has a determinant influence on market orientation stances.