Costumers Satisfaction with Online Banking: A Case Study on HSBC Egypt

Khaled A. Gad
In the last few years, Internet banking in Egypt has witnessed a substantial growth and development. One of the main challenges facing the banking sector in Egypt is how to manage online service quality, which is of a great importance to customer satisfaction. The aim of this paper is to gain better understanding of the relationship between internet banking service quality and customer satisfaction. Five online service quality dimensions have been selected; these dimensions are reliability, efficiency, responsiveness, fulfillment and privacy. A survey has been developed and administered to HSBC customers. A total of 109 Egyptian customers have responded and returned the completed questionnaire. The responses revealed that HSBC customers are most satisfied with the privacy of their HSBC online banking experience. In addition, they were found to be highly satisfied with fulfillment and efficiency dimensions. The overall customers satisfaction of HSBC online experience was found to be high, however, it was discovered that HSBC customers are not completely satisfied with regards to reliability and responsiveness dimensions. These results can provide insights to HSBC bank to fully understand and comprehend what online customers perceive as quality and try to deliver this quality level to meet their expectations.

Keywords: Internet Banking, Customer satisfaction, online service quality and HSBC.

1. Introduction
Not surprising, interest in the measurement of service quality in on-line service environments is understandably high and measuring the quality of the on-line service experience is now seen as an integral part of most managers responsibilities. In turn, this should enable the organization to take up the competitive position based upon its ability to deliver what customer demand, as opposed to that which the organization perceives to be in demand. Undoubtedly, the world is experiencing the most substantial period of change in its economic history since the industrial revolution. Accompanying this change has been a shift in the philosophy of how service firms should organize their businesses. The
Internet is transforming the world economy. It is radically changing how people live, learn, work, play, and consume. At the centre of this revolution is technology. Technology has moved from back office to the front line. Namely the interface between the customer and the firm has changed dramatically. Increasingly, technology is shifting the firms relationships with its customers from a face-to-face to a screen to face interaction.
___________________________ Khaled A. Gad, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport E-mail: Khaled.gad@aucegypt.edu

According to Arunachalam and Sivasubramanian (2007), Internet banking is where a customer can access his or her bank account via the Internet using personal computer (PC) or mobile phone and web-browser. In addition, Ongkasuwan and Tantichattanon (2002) further defines Internet banking service as banking service that allows customers to access and perform financial transactions on their bank accounts from their webenabled computers with Internet connection to banks' web sites any time they wish. Internet banking service also enables bank customers to perform transactions such as transfer and payments, access of latest balance, statement viewing, account detail viewing, customization, print, downloading of statements and obtaining of a history statement on all accounts linked to the banks customers Au toBank (ATMs). According to Khan (2007), Internet banking includes the system that enables financial institution customers, individuals or businesses, access accounts, transact business, or obtain information on financial products and services on public or private network including Internet. Internet banking is the act of conducting financial intermediation on the Internet (Kim et al., 2006). It is that process whereby the customer is able to access, control and use his/her account over the Internet. Since the mid-1990s, there has been a fundamental shift in banking delivery channels toward using self-service channels such as electronic banking, mainly the use of automated teller machines (ATMs) and internet banking. According to Qureshi et al. (2008), clients shifted from traditional banking to online banking system. The core reason of this transfer is perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, security and privacy provided by online banking. Despite the fact that the internet has an ever-growing importance in the banking sector because of the advantages it brings to both the entities and their customers, not all the financial entities that have adopted e-banking have been successful, often because of an inadequate website design and other factors as well (Ortega et al., 2007). According to Wungwanitchakorn (2002), in most developing countries, Internet banking is still in its early stages. Only a few banks are developing such services while others merely use the web to provide information about products and services. Thus, it can be concluded that bank customers are still not accustomed to using electronic channels to manage their financial affairs. This low adoption rate is an indication of the hazards of introducing new products and services into the marketplace; the vast majority of product and service innovations fail, at considerable cost to the companies introducing them. Moreover, those services perceived as necessary by such adopters must also be identified. The identification of personal characteristics related to the adoption of Internet banking is critical for market targeting and the identification of innovative features can help banks in product design and in formulating campaigns that will encourage the adoption of the service. Consumer adoption of a good or a service refers to the acceptance and continued use of a product, service or idea. According to Baraghani (2007), consumers go through a process of knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation before they are ready to a dopt a product or service. Thus, consumer adoption is the adoption process that describes the steps consumers follow in deciding whether or not to use a new product or services. These stages in the adoption process are awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption. Awareness is to communicate the availability of the new product or service. Interest is to

communicate benefits of new product or service to gain consumer interest. Evaluation emphasizes the advantages of new product over alternatives currently on the market. Usage refers to how the customer is able to use the Internet banking services in any transaction (Bearden et al., 2001). Customer satisfaction is defined as a collection of outcome of perception, evaluation and psychological reactions to the consumption experience with a product/service by Saha and Zhao (2005). In other words, it is a result of a cognitive and affective evaluation where some comparison standard is compared to the actually perceived performance. If the performance perceived is less than expected, customers will be dissatisfied. On the other hand, if the perceived performance exceeds expectations, customer will be satisfied and this would lead to retention (Saha and Zhao, 2005; Yau, 2007). The extension of money and banking to the cyberspace is an inevitable development in the information age (Liao and Cheung, 2003). Although the number of users of the internet has increased significantly over the past decade, only a small fraction of those users have made actual purchases over the internet. The failure of the internet as a retail distribution channel has caused to the lack of trust consumers in the electronic channel (E-channel) and in the web merchants (Stewart, 1999). The researchers defined customer satisfaction as the magnitude that the customer obtained with what he/she expected from the same bank. Idan (2002) defined internet banking as any system that gives customers of financial institution the ability to execute financial transactions through the internet. Many researches focused on the user of internet banking that have been done on adoption, and the factors influencing it. The Arab web sites present online banking services such as checking balances, paying bills and helping in building strong communities by helping people achieve their orders instantly and securely.

2. Service quality vs. e-service quality

Today, most people choose the Internet as purchase vehicle due to: convenience (Taylor, 1996; Meuter et al., 2000), selection (Bounds and Quick, 1999; Mardesich, 1999), avoiding human contact, time saving (Dabholkar, 1996), and highly perceived control of service process (Bateson, 2000; Dabholkar, 1996). So quality is still of major importance to differentiate between online service providers. But the question is whether the theories and concepts developed in service quality can be applied to this business medium or not (Gad and Dennis, 2003a, b). Cox and Dale (2001) have introduced two main differences between the physical service environment and the e-commerce environment. The first is, in the physical environment, there is human interaction between the service provider and the consumer. Rather there is no human element interaction as much as in the service delivered over the Internet except contacting customers by e-mails or telephone. The second is, in the physical environment the companies are able to customize their service to individuals because they interact directly with their consumers. For the web site interface, the opportunity to customize is not automatic because the website must

first collect customer information and then process this information to provide customization. Therefore, they suggest that service quality research may not be applicable to the e-business environment. In quality management, the focus is traditionally divided between product and service. With product, a physical item is involved such as goods and the features of quality are easily identifiable. With service, a human element is usually involved and the mode of interaction between the service provider and the customer influences the perception of quality. When a physical product is involved the notion of quality is objective and standardized. However, when the operation is purely service-oriented, it is more difficult to measure quality since customers perceptions and expectations may widely differ. With e-commerce, a third dimension, which is virtual operation, is introduced. Virtual operation in this context can be said to involve, neither product nor human interaction. (Madu and Madu, 2002) Zeithaml et al. (2000) have indicated that e-SQ seems to be more of a cognitive evaluation than an emotion one compared to the service quality. Although emotions such as anger and frustration were expressed when subjects reported on problems arising from e-SQ, these appeared to be less intense than those associated with SQ. They also illustrated that SQ could be described and measured as more is better in virtually all attributes and dimensions. Most customers want as much reliability, responsiveness; empathy and assurance as they can obtain from traditional service providers. In contrast, many of the attributes of e-SQ involved ideal points that varied among customers. In other words, inverted U-shaped relationships, rather than linear relationships, appeared to exist between performance in many dimensions and perceived e-SQ in those dimensions.

3. E-SQ Dimensions
Surviving in the highly competitive Internet service industry, the companies need to provide customers with high quality services. So Internet companies are first required to understand the attributes customers used to judge service quality. Most e-marketers are asking whether the determinants of service quality so far identified can be applied to an e-business environment or not. And if not, what are the main quality dimensions or factors for this business environment? Nowadays, most of e-service researchers are trying to identify the features and dimensions that customers use to access the quality of virtual service or operation. They focus on identifying those characteristics that are perceived by customers as a necessity in achieving customer satisfaction in this environment. Recently several studies on e-commerce have noted that some features of Websites are critical to their business success. For example DAngelo and Little (1998) argued that factors such as navigational characteristics, virtual characteristics, and practical consideration (including images, background, color, sound, video, media, and content) are important considerations in designing a Website. Lohse and Spiller (1999) noted that online business Websites characteristics such as a feedback section and product lists are crucial in generating sales. Liu and Arnett (2000) considered the following four

factors as major ingredients for the success of a Website as: system use; system design quality; information quality; and playfulness. Madu and Madu (2002) have identified 15 dimensions for e-quality or virtual operation based on the review of the literature and identifying both the positive and negative elements that affect the perceptions of customers of virtual operations, these dimensions are synthesis of two major dimensions of quality by Gravin and Berry and Parasuraman models although they have added unique dimensions that virtual operations customers are concerned with. Further, even though some of the dimensions bear similar label, their definitions in a virtual operation may vary. These dimensions are Performance, features, structure, aesthetics, reliability, storage capability, serviceability, security, trust, responsiveness, product differentiation, website polices, reputation, assurance and empathy. They have illustrated that from all of these dimensions; the performance and the security dimension are the most important ones from the Web user point of view. Cox and Dale (2001) have examined the applicability of determinants identified in a physical services environment to assess the service quality dimensions related to e-commerce. They argued that the lack of human interaction during the Web site experience means that determinants such as competence, courtesy, cleanliness, comfort and friendliness, helpfulness, care, commitment, flexibility are not particularly relevant in e-commerce. On the other hand they have identified 11 determinants that can be said to be important to both service quality and Web site service quality, if not in exactly the same way these dimensions are Accessibility, responsiveness, communication, credibility, reliability, security, understanding the customer, appearance, availability, functionality and integrity. Furthermore, Chaffey and Williams (2001) have conducted a study trying to determine the online service quality factors. The study has assessed these factors through the consideration of the dimensions of the SERVQUAL service quality instrument. This evaluation was intended to review online service quality for marketing of both tangible goods such as books or office equipment and intangible products such as financial or travel services and recognizing that any product offer will involve a mix of tangible and intangible elements. Since online service encounters are experienced through an electronic medium, the quality of the delivered product is by definition intangible, this being one of the key characteristics of a service. They highlighted significant features of online service quality for the dimensions of the SERVQUAL. ONeill et al. (2001) have proposed a study for investigating the conceptualization and measurement of service quality in on-line service environments. The study made use of the importance-performance methodology for measuring student perceptions of service quality of an on-line library service in a prominent public sector university in Western Australia. The importance-performance technique is best described as an absolute performance measure of consumer perceptions of service quality; it also seeks to identify the underlying importance ascribed by customers to the various quality criteria being assessed. Lower ratings are likely to play a lesser role in affecting overall perceptions, while higher importance ratings are likely to play a more critical role in determining customer satisfaction. The objective of using this technique is to identify which attributes are more influential in repeat-purchase behavior and which have less impact. A both qualitative and quantitative method was employed. The scales developed were based on the importance-performance paradigm and took the form of an 18-item self-completion questionnaire, which visitors were asked to complete

immediately prior to departing each winery. The results showed that the five-component structure proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1988) for their SERVQUAL scale (Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy and Responsiveness) was not confirmed, revealing a more complex factor structure with four components being extracted. These components are: Contact, responsiveness, reliability and tangibles. Jun and Cai (2001) have studied the key determinants of Internet banking service quality. They have found that the service quality dimensions and their related quality improvement approaches, developed in the traditional banking environment, cannot be an appropriate set of guidelines for effectively managing Internet banking service quality. The reason is that the Internet banks, unlike the traditional banks, seldom have interpersonal interaction with their customers in their banking service delivery process. The results identified 17 dimensions under three categories of Internet banking service quality: (1) Customer service quality: includes ten dimensions named; reliability, responsiveness, competence, courtesy, credibility, access, communication, understanding the customer, collaboration and continuous improvement. (2) Online system quality: includes six dimensions these dimensions are content, accuracy, ease of use, timeliness, aesthetics, and security. (3) Banking service product quality: includes only one dimension which is product variety/diverse features. They have selected only six determinants that the Internet banks should focus on more. These determinants are; responsiveness, reliability, access, ease of use, accuracy, and product variety/diverse features. As these dimensions tend to have strong impacts on either customers satisfaction or dissatisfaction, depending on the quality performance of these dimensions. Moreover, Cai and Jun (2003) have conducted a study to identify the key dimensions of online service quality as perceived by two groups of Internet users, online buyers and information searchers and the perceived differences between online buyers and information searchers, with respect to each of the online service quality dimensions. For this research, the authors initially developed scale items for assessing online purchasers' perceptions of service quality based on the relevant literature review and the results of personal interviews conducted by the authors with three customers who recently purchased some products or services online. The finalized survey questionnaire consisted of two parts. The first addressed the issue related to the demographic characteristics of the respondents. The second contained 33 questionnaire items, measuring the respondents' perceptions on specific characteristics of online service quality and on overall service quality. For this research, the authors categorized the respondents into three groups by asking them to select one of three options: online buyers group, information searchers group, and "others" (neither buyers nor information searchers). The respondents were requested to select the response that best indicated their experiences or perceptions on each statement, using a Likert-type five point scale. In addition, the option of not applicable was provided for each statement so that a respondent can select this choice when a certain statement is not applicable to him or her. The results of this study showed that there are four set of dimensions of online service quality as perceived by the two groups of Internet users,

online buyers and information searchers, the derived dimensions were: Website design/content, trustworthiness, prompt/reliable service and communication. Valarie Zeithaml and Arvind Malhotra have begun in research program for e-service quality in 1999. Focus was on conceptualizing, measuring, and improving service quality of websites. Then Parasuraman has joined them in such research program. Zeithaml et al. (2000) have indicated that consumers consider and use basically similar dimensions in evaluating e-SQ regardless of the type of product and service being evaluated on the Internet. Focus-group interviews conducted in an exploratory study generated e-SQ dimensions and attributes, along with a model of how consumers combine these dimensions into higher level abstractions such as perceived control, perceived convenience, and perceived value. These dimensions are Reliability, Responsiveness, Access, Flexibility, Ease of navigation, Efficiency, Assurance/Trust, Security/Privacy Price knowledge aesthetics and customization/personalization Not surprisingly, some of these dimensions (reliability, responsiveness, access, assurance and customization/personalization) are the same things customers want when they shop offline, judging from earlier research that identified the antecedents of traditional service quality (SQ). But other dimensionsease of navigation, flexibility, efficiency, site aesthetics, and price knowledgeare unique to buying online. Most of these are technology-related. The only exception is price knowledge, the absence of which frustrates many online shoppers, who wish they could see what their total charges are before they hit the submit button. Although these dimen sions are considered the best in measuring consumers evaluation of electronic service quality as it is based on six focus group interviews with consumers having some experience with online purchases (1-8 purchases per month). The proposed eleven dimensions do not completely cover consumer evaluations of core and supporting services. Supporting services like book recommendations are somewhat inconveniently listed under customization dimension, but other important supporting services, such as discussion forums, selections of relevant new articles or reviews are not covered by any of the dimensions (Liljander et al. 2002). Also dimensions of assurance and security/privacy can be termed trust dimension. As trust concept reflects the degree of consumers confidence to provide personal information and credit card information, this indicates the security dimension. And also it reflects also the degree of consumers confidence in the company, site reputation and company reputable brands, this is assurance. Furthermore, Sohel Ahmed (2002) has added another important dimension when evaluating perceived e-SQ, which is recovery system. He illustrated that during online shopping, a buyer interacts with mediating environment that may not detect service failure. Therefore, buyers should be given their concern quickly and easily. Once complains are heard, the customer recovery activities need to be invoked with the goal of transforming these dissatisfied customers into satisfied customers and, thereby, minimizing customer outrage. The service recovery process can have a significant impact on positive or negative word of mouth. Customers who are satisfied with the service recovery process are less likely to spread negative word of mouth. In contrast, Cox and Dale (2001), have indicated that recovery system is non-relevant determinant to the Web site experience. As this determinant can only be judged when the service or part of it goes wrong. If there is a problem with a Web site, it is highly likely that

customers will just click to a competitor and therefore the process of recovery cannot be started. But they indicated that if the problem occurs offline recovery becomes much more important. Janda et al. (2002) have conducted a research to explore consumers' perceptions of Internet retail service quality. This is accomplished via two studies. Study 1 utilizes qualitative depth interviews to identify dimensions important to consumers in their assessment of the quality of Internet retailers. Study 2 quantifies these dimensions using multi-item scales, and conducts a survey to assess the reliability and validity of these dimensions. The overall results for this study indicated that these five constructs allows for a good initial test of the efficacy of these dimensions for predicting consumers reactions important to retailers selling goods and services on the Internet. Further, the study findings demonstrate support for the strong predicative power of the overall scale for estimating satisfaction with the experience, word-of-mouth, future purchase intentions and, to lesser extent, likelihood of complaining. In particular, it appears that online consumers may be most concerned with such factors as performance and information, and, to a slightly lesser extent, assure the customer of financial and personal security and privacy. Although access emerged as potential factor in the qualitative data, the results of the quantitative study demonstrated that consumers generally showed little interest in this construct as it failed to predict consumers' satisfaction with the experience, word-of-mouth, future purchase intentions and likelihood of complaining. Sensation dimension only emerged as a marginally significant predicator of complaining behavior. And it failed as a predictor to consumers' satisfaction with the experience, word-of-mouth, and future purchase intentions. Finally, Wolfinbarger and Gilly (2003) have conducted a research to develop a reliable and valid scale for the measurement of e-tial quality. The research program involved three data collection efforts, each step building on the previous step. In step one, they used focus groups to generate statements to include in the other two phases of the study. In a second step, subjects sorted the statements so that the domain of e-tail quality could be conceptualized and dimensionalized according to consumer rather than researcher perceptions. In the third step, the dimensions of e-tail quality are defined using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of online survey data. This method results in a five cluster solution, with the clusters composed of website design, customer service, personalization, fulfillment, and privacy/security. The third phase of data collection involved an online survey conducted using Harris Poll online panel. Harris Interactive randomly selected members age 18+ to receive e-mail invitations to participate in the study. A total of 1013 completed questionnaires resulted from the invitations. The items were submitted to exploratory factor analysis and then confirmatory factor analysis with the goal of investigating unidimensionality. Four factors have been extracted from the third study they defined as: Fulfillment/reliability: is the accurate display and description of a product so that what customers receive is what they thought they ordered, and delivery of the right product within the time frame promised. Website design: includes all elements of the consumer's experience at the website, including navigation, information search, order processing, appropriate personalization, and product selection.

Customer service: is responsive, helpful, willing service that responds to customer inquires quickly. Security/privacy: is security of credit card payments and privacy of shared information.

This study is trying to fulfill the following objectives: 1- To measure customers satisfaction concerning HSBC online banking service quality among five dimensions named reliability, efficiency, responsiveness, fulfillment and privacy and the relative importance of each online service quality dimension. 2- To measure the impact of demographic variables on customers satisfaction concerning HSBC online banking service quality.

4. Methodology
For this paper, a large scale structured survey was distributed among HSBC clients. The Arabic version of the scale has been created through careful translation. These Arabic statements have been back-translated into English by a bilingual expert. The translated version has been cross-checked independently by another group of bilingual researchers. Then pilot testing including 30 respondents has been carried out to ensure the reliability of the scale and allow for final adjustments. A total of 250 questionnaires have been distributed across HSBC Egypt clients and a total of 109 HSBC online banking users have responded, resulting in 43.6% response rate. The survey includes two sections; the first section includes demographics of the population and the second section includes the satisfaction scale concerning the five online service quality dimensions selected; these dimensions are reliability, efficiency, responsiveness, fulfillment and privacy. The satisfaction scale (See appendix 1) is consisting of thirty-two five-point Likert-scale statements aimed at capturing the respondents' satisfaction concerning HSBC online service quality (1="Strongly disagree," 5= "Strongly agree"), as suggested by parasuraman et., al.(1991), and which have been proven to be highly reliable and valid.

5. Descriptive analysis
The total Egyptian sample for the quantitative study was 109 respondents after the editing and validation process. (54%) of the respondents were males as compared to females (46%). With regards to age, sample was skewed more towards the middle age and adults (86%), as compared to the younger (14%). The sample is dominated by respondents who are graduates and post graduates or with a professional degree (89%) compared to students (11%). The majority of the participants (83.5%) were more experienced used compared to (16.5%) were less experienced users (see table 1).

Table 1: Demographic Characteristics of the Sample (N)

Demographics Gender Number of cases 109 Classification Male Female below 21 21-40 above 40 Two years after school or student university graduate post graduate or professional degree Less than one year From one year to three years More than three years Frequency 58 51 16 49 44 12 75 22 18 49 42 Percent 54.0 46.0 14.6 45.0 40.4 11.0 69.0 20.0 16.5 45.0 38.5

Age

109

Educational level

109

Level of experience

109

6. Findings
The reliability of the attitude scale has been tested and resulted with a Cronbach's alpha 0.819. According to Bryman (2004, p.72), "the figure 0.80 is typically employed as a rule of thumb to denote an acceptable level of internal reliability". The result is shown in table (2). Table 2: Reliability Statistics Number of Scale Items 32 Cronbachs Alpha .819

Analysis of HSBC consumers satisfaction with online banking revealed that consumers are most satisfied with the privacy of their HSBC online banking experience, as reflected by a mean value of 4.6587. In addition, they were found to be highly satisfied with fulfillment and efficiency, as indicated by mean values of 4.44465 and 4.1606, respectively. The overall satisfaction of HSBC consumers was found to be high, with a mean value of 4.1954; however, it was discovered that HSBC consumers are not completely satisfied with regards to reliability and responsiveness; this is indicated by a mean value of 3.8583 with respect to reliability, and a mean value of 3.3578 with respect to responsiveness as shown in (Appendix B, table B1). Furthermore, the analysis revealed that privacy is regarded the most important dimension of the HSBC online banking experience, as reflected by a mean value of

4.7615. Following this, a mean value of 4.3761 indicated that efficiency ranks second and a mean value of 4.3578 was indicative of responsiveness ranking third. The reliability of the HSBC online banking experience was found to rank fourth with respect to its importance, with a mean value of 4.2936. The least importance was found to be attributed to fulfillment, which was found to have a mean value of 4.2202 (see Appendix B, table B2). Table B3 and B4, Appendix B highlights that there is significant difference between males and females online clients concerning their overall satisfaction from online banking services provided by HSBC. Furthermore table 4.6 highlights that; there is a no significant difference between young and old Egyptian Internet shoppers with regards their overall satisfaction (sig. 0.322), Also, no significant difference has been found between low and high educated Internet banking clients with regards to their perception towards the overall e-SQ (sig. 0.256). Finally, it can be indicated that there is significant difference between low and high experienced Egyptian Internet shoppers with regards to their perception of website design (sig. 0.00)

7. Conclusion
The concern of this study is the internet banking satisfaction. The results showed that there is a wide-based satisfaction with internet banking in all dimensions. Although the study has also shown that the overall customers satisfaction of HSBC online experience was found to be high due to the high customers satisfaction with privacy, fulfillment and efficiency dimensions, however, it was discovered the HSBC clients are not completely satisfied with regards to reliability and responsiveness dimensions. With regards the relative importance of the online service quality dimensions, privacy is regarded the most important dimension of the HSBC online banking experience, followed by efficiency then responsiveness and reliability dimension and the least importance was found to be attributed to fulfillment dimension. Furthermore, the study also revealed that the overall clients satisfaction is affected by gender and level of experience but not by age and level of education Based on these results, the organization must improve the customer satisfaction through improving all factors or other means as considering customer behavior, being careful with customer relation management, online market research and business intelligence. Due to no relation between information content and customer satisfaction, improving information content of a website should be considered. HSBC should give more concern to the privacy dimension as a critical determent of the success of the Internet banking, since the Internet is an open network, Internet banking customers tend to be much more concerned with the security of their banking transactions and the privacy of their personal information. Furthermore, efficiency dimension has a great importance to HSBC customers, though the bank should provide customers with understandable content on banks website and multi language selection is highly recommended. With regards to responsiveness, HSBC should pay more

attention to customers e-mails, phone calls and personal contact when problems occur. HSBC should reply customers emails fast and provide proper information when customers need advice, since quick response can increase customer s satisfaction and personal contact can establish good relationship and trust with the customers.

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Appendix A: the Questionnaire

Dear Sir/ Madam, The Internet is transforming the world economy. It is radically changing how people live, learn, work, play, and consume. As an Internet banking user, please complete this survey, which is intended to gather information regarding your satisfaction concerning the internet banking service quality. Thank you for completing the survey. Socio-economic data 1- Your gender A- Male B- Female 2- Your age A- 18 to 25 yrs B- 25 to 39 yrs C- Above 40 yrs 3- Your formal education A- School to age 16 B- GCSE or equivalent (e.g. American diploma) C- Two years after school D- Graduated university E- Postgraduate or professional degree 4- How long have you been using HSBC Internet banking services? A- Less than one year. B- from one year to 3 years. C- more than 3years. 5- We are interested in assessing your perception regarding the quality of the service provided by the Internet banking for HSBC: For this purpose you are required to express your perception regarding the following electronic service quality (E-SQ) items related to HSBC online banking service, using a five point scale. Where one indicates that you strongly disagree (lowest level) with this item and five indicates that you strongly agree (Highest level), numbers in between resemble various levels of agreement or disagreement.

1: Strongly disagree 1- The speed of log in for your account is fast. 2- It is easy to find all the important information from the banks website. 3- The banks site is easy to navigate and is simple to use. 4- It is easy to find policy and notice statement on the bank site. 5- The banks site does not get you lost. 6- The speed of logout of you account is fast. 7- Above quality criteria are important for my satisfaction. 8- The banks web pages are functioning properly. 9- The banks site is up and running all the time. 10- The banks site doesnt freeze after you have put in all your information. 11Links are problem-free, accurate and the pages download quickly. 12- Information that is provided is accurate. 13- Information content and texts are easy to understand. 14- Above quality criteria important for my satisfaction. are 1

2: Disagree

3:Neither agree nor disagree

4:Agree

5: Strongly agree

15- The bank provides appropriate information to customers when a problem occurs.

16- The bank is willing to help customers and provide prompt service. 18- The bank compensate for the problematic they create. 19- You are able to talk to a live person using a telephone number. 20- The banks site has online customer service representatives. 21- The bank takes problems promptly. care of

22- Above quality criteria important for my satisfaction.

are

23- The banks site provides a confirmation of the service ordered. 24-The banks site performs the service right the first time. 25- The banks site provides quick confirmation. 26- Above quality criteria important for my satisfaction. are

27- The banks shows care in how it collects your personal information. 28- The banks site does not use cookies to collect information. 29- The banks site is secure for your credit card information. 30- You can rely on the information that you give not being misused. 31- You can rely on the information remaining in the register. 32- Above quality criteria important for my satisfaction. are

Appendix B

Table B1: customers satisfaction with e-SQ dimensions

One-Sample Test Test Value = 0 95% Confidence Interv al of the Dif f erence Lower Upper 4.0359 4.2852 3.6964 4.0201 3.1611 3.5545 4.3482 4.5448 4.6032 4.7142 4.0281 4.1595

Ef ficiency Reliability Responsiv eness Fulf illment Priv acy Ov erall Satisf action

t 66.162 47.258 33.836 89.683 166.428 123.507

df 108 106 108 108 108 106

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

Mean Dif f erence 4.1606 3.8583 3.3578 4.4465 4.6587 4.0938

Table B2: the relative importance of online banking SQ dimension

One-Sample Test Test Value = 0 95% Conf idence Interv al of the Dif f erence Lower Upper 4.2703 4.4820 4.1689 4.4183 4.2325 4.0901 4.6802 4.4831 4.3503 4.8428

ef f iciency importance. Reliabilit y importance Responsiv eness importance Fulf illment importance Priv acy importance

t 81.939 68.238 68.934 64.296 116.106

df 108 108 108 108 108

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

Mean Dif f erence 4.3761 4.2936 4.3578 4.2202 4.7615

Table B3: paired samples test gender and overall satisfaction Std. deviation t DF Sig.

GenderOverall satisfaction

.6641

-42.348

108

.000

Table B4 ANOVA: level of satisfaction and demographics e-SQ dimensions Age Between group Within group Total Level of education Between group Within group Total Level of experience Between group Within group Total 2 106 108 8.784 0.000 2 106 108 1.318 0.256 DF F Sig.

2 106 108

1.145

0.322