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The Internet has been one of the key drivers in promoting E-Commerce in the banking sector for over ten years (Jeevan, 2000; Karjaluoto et al. 2002). Internet banking (or e-banking) is an ‘Internet portal, through which customers can use different kinds of banking services ranging from bill payment to making investments’ (Pikkarainen et al., 2004, p. 224–235). Internet banking has provided benefits to both customers and banks. Customers benefit from a wide range of banking transactions electronically by the bank’s web site – anytime and anywhere, faster, and with lower fees compared to using traditional, real-world bank branches (Krauter & Faullant, 2008) and will only chose those institutions who are making a real effort to provide a high level of quality, fast and efficient service through all the bank’s touch points, call centers, ATMs, voice response systems, Internet and branches (Alawneh and Hattab, 2009). Banks introduce electronic banking (e-banking) systems to improve their operations and to reduce costs (Alawneh and Hattab, 2008). Banks have begun to setup their own web portal to provide internet service and gain the advantages of unlimited time, area, fewer cost, and more customers from internet banking (Ho & Lin, 2010).
To deliver superior Internet banking service quality to customers, bank managers must first understand how consumers perceive and evaluate online customer service (Parasuraman et al., 2005). There have been many fragmented studies over the last decade proposing their own scales for this purpose to measure Internet service quality (e.g. Alanezi et al. 2010; Barnes and Vidgen 2002; Kassim and Abdullah 2010; Li and Suomi 2009; Santos 2003; Yang et al. 2003) e-banking service quality in particular (e.g. Gupta and Bansal 2011; 2012; Jayawardhena and Foley 2000; Jun and Cai 2001; Kumbhar 2012; Siu and Mou 2005). The problem with these fragmented studies is that many of the scales use different combinations of constructs and items, as well as different names for the same construct.
The major objective of this paper and its contribution to knowledge, therefore, is to consolidate these fragmented studies on Internet service quality and e-banking service quality to develop a scale comprising a set of constructs which can be used to measure e-banking service quality. The scale compares expected service (E) with perceived service (P) across all nine constructs and measures perceived service quality based P – E (based on the work of Parasuraman et al. 1985, 1986, 1991, 1993, 1994).