CUSTOMERS PERCEPTION OF SERVICE QUALITY OF NNPC RETAIL OUTLETS IN ENUGU URBAN, NIGERIA

Service quality is becoming more crucial for oil and gas firms to maintain their market shares. This study identified the perception of customers of petroleum services firm (NNPC) through the relationship of five factors along with the demographic characteristics of customers. A total of 304 retail customers who patronize petroleum filling stations have been taken for the study and convenience sampling method was adopted for collecting a sample. Factor analysis revealed five factors and results of analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that while age, gender, occupation have no significant effect on customer perception of service quality income and qualification on the contrary differs significantly. The paper therefore recommends among other things that, the concepts and principles of total quality management (TQM) are recommended for holistic study, in addition to contemporary marketing management issues such as relationship marketing, value analysis and permission marketing, among others. Efforts should also be made by petroleum marketers to understand the relevant factors that affect both clients’ behaviours so as to understand the strategic options to be adopted to cope with such behaviours. Article visualizations: