Exploring e-service quality: a study of Irish online banking

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of self-service banking technology and investigates customers' perceptions of internet banking self-service within the Irish financial services sector. This qualitative study of the Irish retail banking sector explored consumers' e-banking interactions and experiences in addition to assessing the dimensions critical to e-banking service quality. Design/methodology/approach - A purposive sampling technique was employed to recruit 20 consumers representing the desired range of demographic characteristics (e.g. sex, age, profession), previous internet experience levels and product-related knowledge. Findings - Despite commonalities between traditional service quality and e-banking service quality dimensions, due to the remote form of the online encounter, many traditional service quality attributes were found to be redundant and instead e-dimensions such as web usability, trust, access and information quality service recovery and flexibility emerged as important to e-banking service provision. Based on an extant review of the literature ten e-service dimensions were proposed and evaluated empirically in the context of e-banking service quality. Overall, process quality emerged as key within the online context, with nine out of the ten proposed e-banking dimensions relating to the service process. Originality/value - The paper contributes to previous research by adding to existing knowledge regarding what constitutes e-banking service and the determinants critical to e-banking service quality. The paper makes key recommendations towards enhancing current online financial services quality and delivery.