CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1        Background of the study

The female executives that are working in banks today making use of this opportunities, not only to support the family financially, but rather took the job to set a new bench mark and improved themselves to be equally good. .Adeyemo and ogunyemi (2007), explains that staff has to be happy and healthy in order to deliver first rate services. The trend now is for organizations to do things faster, to achieve better performance, higher profits and faster growth. The ultimate goals is to maximize customer satisfaction, it is essential to understand what customers want from a bank research has shown that customer expectations for quality service can be categorized into five area, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, reliability, and tangibles The traditional concept is that a woman’s place is in the home and her primary responsibilities include child bearing and nurturing, socialization and other house hold duties necessary for ensuring a comfortable life for the husband and children and to keep family stable.(Adenugba and Ilupeju,2012).

When the organizations performance increase, especially in banking work, stress, overload, frustration, aggression turnover, family imbalance, time factor, location and other side effects also occur (Noor, 2008). Aamir and Hira (2003) observes that working style is changing at a very fast speed from what it was, to what it is now and this has become a subject of concern in many nations now. Oluwole et al (2011) expresses long working hours as one of the major causes of stress and personal life imbalance, and this has direct negative consequences as well as causing other illnesses.. The anxiety level and demands of workers have also increased there by making them to work a lot and for longer hours at the expense of their personal lives (Mbah,2013). As the workers do this, there is potential conflict on workload, risk, transfer, stress will increase and they have to struggle with the demand of balancing paid work with home responsibilities. Therefore, the concept of social exchange reflects the actions that take place between the female marketers and the customers. The customers expected a reward from the female marketers for whatever deposits they make to the banks, the reward include the gains from the social relationships with the marketers, as they interacts on the cash deposits and when such rewards are not forth coming it affect the relationship on the part of the customers. Marketers are at this point left to use their initiative and common sense in order to analysis the situation, and prepare a backup plan for social interaction, which is a strong strategy opened to female marketers to win customers to a bank.

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Female managers add value by fostering team work and creativity, which statically increase the organization productivity and their performance, using job performance as a new mark for success and best practices, allowing practitioners to measure and investigate causality behavior, because good performance indicate increase in revenues and consequently business growth. Performance measurement seems to have been quite a clear cut choice for business to implement for two reasons, Firstly measuring financial growth of the sector (direct labour cost and direct material costs). Secondly on return on investment (ROI) and Return on Equity (ROE). That why the new generation banks in Nigeria are responsible for providing a large proportion of the country’s money supply (Adenugba and Ilupeju, 2012). These new generation banks adopted various strategies such as; removing and relaxing bureaucratic operating procedures to make their services faster and better; giving of high interest rates to customers, bringing flexibility to management style; giving enhanced pay and conditions of service to their workers, flexibility on labour and recruitment standard, disregard for trade unionism and adoption of aggressive marketing strategies with marketers.

The consolidation of banks corrects deficiencies in the financial sector as well as accelerating the rate of growth in the sector. The economic rationale for domestic consolidation is indisputable. An early view of consolidation in banking was that it makes banking more cost efficient because larger banks can eliminate excess capacities in areas like data processing, personal, marketing and overlapping branch networks. According to Earnest (2012) reports that consolidation is viewed as the reduction in the number of banks and other deposit taking institutions with a simultaneous increase in size and concentration of the consolidation entities in the sector. Akpan (2009), states that maximizing returns and optimizing profitability become the challenge for banks immediately after the consolidation exercise where banks are required to significantly increase their level of returns and at the same time manage costs. To realize this, banks will have to offer innovative products and services to the marketplace including new ways of delivering them. Banks use on-line information and databases on individual customer interactions. Marketers aim to fulfill the unique needs of each mass-marketing customer, information on individual customers is utilized to develop frequency marketing, interactive marketing to develop relationships with high yield customers (file, et al 1995). Internal marketing provide a team of well-trained work force with adequate job knowledge, marketing skill and positive attitude. This study dwells mostly on assessment of performance of female marketing executives in selected commercial banks in Niger state, Nigeria.

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1.2        Statement of the problem.

The gender theory used family interest and personal qualities to explain female work behavior, since man is stereotypically assumed to be more competent relative to women (Broadbridge, 2008). It was observed that female employees experience more physical pain and discomfort due to inability to give up conventional domestic obligations as a home maker which costs additional strain on them. Constant exposure to computer terminals and the radiation has adverse effects on the pregnant women such as high psychological pressure, sitting position, headache and neck pain. The famine nature does not permit them to resist the workload and factors which are include work related, domestic stress, time factor, challenges of work place and the issue of meeting irrational people is common which is frustrating(Kumar and Sundar, 2012). Unqualified marketers are employed to do this job by educating them in their marketing department to sell their products (retailing banking). They also forgo promotion out the fear of causing dislocation in the family base on bank branches that are located in prime locality of the town or city and in the course of reaching the branch they need to travel far off places. Work schedule (heavy work load) have adverse impact on them physically and mentally, they find it challenging to strike between their work and domestic life harmony which is currently reducing their life span to the extent that the average life expectancy in this country is dropping every day (Adenugba,and IIupeju,2012).

Bula (2012) holds the view that marital status of a women manager has no significant effect on their performance in time of office responsibilities, Authors assert that women tend to manage in a less hierarchy in Nigeria, but have more interactive style than their male counterparts, leading to more teamwork, intrinsic motivation, and ultimately creativity with different set of life experience (Book, 2000). Leadership inspiring people to perform, even if the organization has all the financial resource to excel, it may fail dismally if the leadership does not motivate others to accomplish their task effectively. Despite the laudable objectives of the consolidation exercise, the post-consolidation effects and challenges are still glaring to stakeholders. These challenges, include the issue of qualified and adequately trained manpower, efficient staff motivation, computerization of the banking operation, autonomy of the central bank, cashless economy policy of the central bank, diversification of operation, political instability, effective internal control, relationship among regulations authorities, teeming number of dissatisfied, customers , (Akintaro,2008). The greatest challenge of the financial institution remains the ability of banks to be more marketing oriented in their policy framework and daily operations. Banks and other financial institutions must embrace and develop adequate, effective and efficient customer service strategies that make the customer feel as kings. That is why according to Munusamy and

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Chelliah (2011), reports customer satisfaction has become a factor in the area of marketing as more organizations are trying to retain the customers for their business survival.

Despite the consolidation policy and emergence of banks, the customer still remain the proverbial grass that the treaded upon when two elephants wrestle. For instance the introduction of the ATM machines and cashless policy initiative of the central bank has again placed the customer at a crossroad. Most customers are not properly informed and educated on how to use these innovations but are rather charged, exorbitantly if we may add fees for which they contributed that banks have not failed because the provider of services, they have not gone distressed because there are millions of customers who still require their services. Nigeria banks have fall short of the expectations of their customers in recent time. Customers have experienced challenges ranging from delayment, stock out, non-availability of staff at service points, unprofessional conduct or rudeness by the staff of the bank, poor standard of records or improper information, failed promises among others. In the words of Ogunnaike and Ogbari (2008), customer’s service in our banking industry can be mistaken to mean customer delay and frustration. According to the authors almost every Nigeria bank encounters similar problem in meeting customer’s expectation of services and customer satisfaction. The issue of money transfer in banks is one major problem that certain banks have been made to experience.in most cases, the customer hardly receive the payment of the money transferred in his account immediately. Also, the long queues and huge crowds in the banking halls can be highly devastating and discouraging most times, especially when the weekend is near. Most times, these long queues are as a result of the breakdown of the computers used by these cahiers, or lack of enough ATM machine in some branches.

1.3        Objectives of the Study.

The objective of the study is the assessment of performance of female marketing executives in commercial banks in Niger state, Nigeria

The specific objectives of the study include the following:

1.      To evaluate performance of female marketers executive in the banking industry.

2.      To determine the operational risk faced by the female marketing executives in the course of discharging their bank duties.

3.      To determine workplace conditions that influences female marketing executives in the banking industry.

4.      To identify marketing strategies often adopted by the banks that influences the performance female marketing executives in the banking industry.

5.      To identify personal strategies often adopted by the female marketing executives to improve their performance in the banking industry

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