Determinants of Personnel Differentiation for Competitive Advantage: From the Perspective of Customer Satisfaction

Personnel differentiation has been viewed as one of the immeasurable competitive advantage for the service sector in the world. Such advantage or human resource based advantage is difficult for a competitor to imitate because the source of the advantage may not be very apparent to an outsider. If the service organization wants to achieve competitive advantage they must differentiate their personnel to satisfy their customer. Satisfied customer can loyal to the organization and loyal customer increases its profitability and sustainability. So, Different dimensions of personnel differentiation have been considered by various previous scholars. This study is an attempt to identify the factor causing personnel differentiation to satisfy customer for banking service for achieving competitive advantage. The study is exploratory in nature and uses Factor Analysis (Principal Component Analysis) to identify the most important factors of personnel differentiation which can help to achieve the competitive advantage of bank among 15 variables. The research methodology is empirical and a survey of different customers (sample-150) was conducted. The reliability test was used; the variable under study and sample size came reliable for the study. The findings reveal that six factors are considered important for determining personnel differentiation from the perspective of customer satisfaction. These factors are ‘Visually Appealing personality and Tangibility ’; ‘Assurance’; ‘Credibility and Accessibility’; ‘Responsiveness’ ;’Empathy’ and ‘ Reliability’.