The Impact of e-Banking on Service Quality in the Egyptian Banking Sector

Purpose
This study aims to examine the various Egyptian customers’ usage patterns of banking services in an attempt to provide a better understanding of factors affecting customer’s decision of using the electronic banking services.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to a convenience sample of customers. No category was used in the sample selection in order to avoid bias; the only condition was that respondents should have bank’s account.
Findings
Findings revealed that about 88.85% of sample was users of automated teller machine, internet banking, and mobile banking. However, still a considerable number of them prefer to visit the branch at least once monthly.
Research limitations/implications
The study was confined to banks in Alexandria, which may not represent the entire Egyptian population. The study also focused on banks’ customers and it didn’t take into consideration the opinion of banks’ managers and employees.
Originality/value
This paper introduces theoretical and practical understanding of the impact of ebanking on service quality in the Egyptian banking sector.
 
 
Keywords: customer satisfaction, electronic banking services, service quality
Article Classification: Research paper
 
1. Introduction
Electronic banking (Ebanking) services provide banks with an opportunity to gain competitive advantage through improving their services quality and in return achieving customer satisfaction. Ebanking is the process by which a customer may perform banking transactions electronically without visiting the bank branches (Karjaluoto et al., 2002). It offers advantages and disadvantages to both providers and consumers. For banks, the use of online services enables significant cost reduction while enhancing service efficiency and effectiveness (Chen, 2013). In addition, online services increase market penetration and customer retention (Chong et al., 2010). Moreover, it decreases the incidence of heterogeneity in the service (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2000).The main advantage for customers, is access to service when and where the customer requires it (Bitner et al., 2000), as well as ease of use, convenience, time savings, cost savings, and control over service provision (Curran and Meuter, 2005; Ho and Ko, 2008).