The impacts of e-service quality and e-customer satisfaction on e-customer loyalty in internet banking

Abstract

Internet banking is one of the increasingly important businesses in electronic business worldwide. Measuring e-SQ has become major focus of service marketers for ensuring electronic customer satisfaction (e-Satisfaction), which in turn contributing to customer loyalty (e-Loyalty). Internet banking is rapidly becoming one of the most popular services utilized in Malaysians retail banking customers. Building e-Loyalty is important for the commercial banks in Malaysia to stay competitive in internet banking market. A review on e-Loyalty in internet banking indicated that the impact of e-SQ and e-satisfaction on e-Loyalty should be determined as a way of improving the internet banking service that contribute to the e-Loyalty. This fact makes it important for the banks in Malaysia to have a clear view on the impacts of their internet banking e-SQ and e-satisfaction on e-loyalty. Therefore, this study was designed to examine the relationship and the impacts of e-SQ and e-Satisfaction on e-Loyalty in Malaysia's internet banking. The measurement of e-SQ was based on the modified version of E-SERVQUAL instrument to determine e-SQ for internet banking service of a commercial bank in Malaysia. Three items used to measure users e-satisfaction of internet banking based on the construct of e-Satisfaction proposed by Schaupp and Bélanger. Four items were developed to determine e-Loyalty of the internet banking users based on the work of Ribbink, et al. Questionnaires were used in this study and they were distributed to the internet banking users using convenience sampling procedure. The Exploratory Factor Analysis performed indicated that assurance-fulfillment, efficiency-system availability; privacy, contact-responsiveness and website aesthetics and guide constitute e-SQ for the internet banking service, indicating some modification to the E-SERVQUAL is required when it is used to measure e-SQ for the service. Website aesthetics and Guide, Efficiency-System availability and Contact-Responsiveness of the internet banking e-SQ were positively affected e-Satisfaction. E-Satisfaction was positively significant to e-Loyalty. E-Satisfaction was found to partially mediate the relationship of Website aesthetics and guide of e-SQ and customer e-Loyalty. The result highlighted that attractiveness and appearance of banks' websites, and the information and guidance provide by the websites are important features to internet banking users. This finding reflected that in internet banking, beside the technical and functionality aspects of banks' websites e-SQ, such as efficiency, fulfillment and system availability, the aesthetic value and proper guidance of the websites are also crucial to ensure quality of e-SQ that will lead to e-Satisfaction and e-Loyalty.