RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF SERVICE QUALITY DIMENSIONS AND THEIR IMPACT ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN PUBLIC SECTOR BANKS FROM NORTHERN INDIA

INTRODUCTION:Research on customer satisfaction is often closely associated with the measurement of quality (East, 1997). Customer satisfaction often depends on the quality of product or service offering (Anderson & Sullivan, 1993); (Levesque & McDougall, 1996). Service quality and customer satisfaction are inarguably be two core concepts that are at the crux of marketing theory and practice (Spreng & Mackoy, 1996). (Parasuraman et al., 1988) defined service quality as "a global judgment or attitude, relating to the overall superiority of the service". Service quality has been described in the form of attitude that results from the comparison of expectations with performance (Cronin & Taylor, 1992); (Parasuraman et al., 1985). (Sureshchander et al., 2001) identified five factors of service quality as critical from customers' point of view. These factors are namely core service or service products, human elements of service delivery, systematization of service delivery. (Yang et al., 2004) identified five online service quality dimensions such as responsiveness, reliability, competence, access and security. In today's world of intense competition, the key to sustainable competitive advantage lies in delivering high quality service that will in turn result in satisfying customers (Shemwell et al., 1998). Now due to the globalization and technological advancements, banks are also bestowing many new and advanced facilities/services to their customers to fulfill their needs as per their expectations. The advanced way of providing services to the banking customers is electronic banking. The various services through electronic banking are Internet banking, Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT), Electronic Clearing Services (ECS), ATMs, National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) system and card based payment systems. Internet banking is the major focus of modern banking system which has resulted in increasing number of customers switching from traditional banking to such banking channel which can be accessed through Internet. It is important for the banks to recognize the importance of improving Internet banking services so that existing customers can receive desired level of service quality and at the same time newer customers can also be attracted also.A thorough review of literature on customer satisfaction in banking industry has shown that there are very less studies which could analyze the customer satisfaction due to Internet banking operations in Northern India. Accordingly, the researcher has conducted this study to fill the research gap relating to the analysis of customer satisfaction with regard to Internet banking operations in Northern India.LITERATURE REVIEW:(Liao & Cheung, 2002) in their study titled 'Internet Based e-Banking and Consumer Attitudes: An Empirical Study' identified and measured the consumers' attitude towards and willingness to use internet based e -banking. The analysis showed that expectations of accuracy, security, network speed, user-friendliness, user involvement and convenience were the most important quality attributes underlying perceived usefulness (Verma & Sehdev, 2004) in their paper titled 'Relative Importance of Service Quality Dimensions: A Multi-Sectoral Study' attempted to explore relative importance of service quality dimensions out of the five quality dimensions named responsiveness, reliability, empathy, tangibility and assurance. Three methods named zone of tolerance, regression and direct evaluation were used to find the relative importance of service attributes and to establish consistency in their order of importance. It was found that in banking, assurance came at the first place, then responsiveness at the second place, followed by reliability, empathy and tangibility in the order of importance. It was observed that the perceived performance was below the 'adequate' level of performance in the four i.e. reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy of the five service dimensions It was also found that banks performed better in case of tangibility dimensions. …