Title: A qualitative review of approaches for assessing service quality in banking and implications in the Chinese context

Authors: Sajal Kabiraj; Dwarika Prasad Uniyal

Addresses: International Center for Organization and Innovation Studies (ICOIS), #48, Linjin Building, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, 217 Jianshan Street, Sha He Kou District, Dalian, 116025, China ' Indian Institute of Management Kashipur (IIM), Bazpur Road, Kashipur, Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand-244713, India

Abstract: Service quality is known to be an important factor in banking as it is at the root of customer satisfaction and other behavioural outcomes. Being elusive and abstract in nature, service quality is too difficult in defining and measuring. All the banks in China offer similar kinds of services, but they could provide differences in terms of service quality. The authors through the present research analyse past studies regarding service quality and customer satisfaction in the retail banking industry. The relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction and their effect is also explained in this paper. Improved service quality should be adopted to give maximum satisfaction to customer and this paper contributes knowledge and background for banks to apply these findings to better shape and focus their positions in the market and also to provide maximum satisfaction to customers. The present qualitative study lays out the scope for bank management and future researchers to develop and find the refined scale through which it might be easier to embed among other measures thereby enhancing and facilitating operationalisation and development of cumulative research with greater confidence.

Keywords: service quality; retail banks; SERVPERF; scale; customer satisfaction; banking; China; bank services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJQRS.2013.054363

International Journal of Qualitative Research in Services, 2013 Vol.1 No.1, pp.53 - 75

Received: 28 Nov 2012
Accepted: 04 Jan 2013
Published online: 05 Jul 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article