Electronic banking: an object of fallacy or system of functionality

Abstract — Corporate managers in the banking industry have employed series of strategies to lure many customers to patronage their categories they offer for sale. One of such is E-banking. These technological services are introduced by banks with the objective of providing customers with rapid services, with cost efficient. The situation tends to be different in this part of the world. Most of these services partially exist and if it fully does, it comes with unprecedented system failures. Based upon this premises this study is conducted exploratory to find out what really constitutes electronic banking from the Ghanaian perspective and also to ascertain their linkage with customer satisfaction. A total number of 200 questionnaires were administered. Cross-sectional survey was employed using questionnaire as the principal tool for the data collection. A 5-point Likert- scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5(strongly agree) was used to measure the constructs. With the aid of SPSS version 23 the data was analyzed to establish the empirical linkage of the underlying constructs. The study among other things brought to the fore three (3) determinants (Automated Teller Machine, Mobile Phone Banking, Internet or Online banking) that define e-banking from the Ghanaian perspective proving that it is a system of functionality that is established for specific strategic purpose better still because of inefficient execution it was also proven to be an object of fallacy in the sense that having it does not necessary leads to customer satisfaction. The data analysis also shows that statistically between automated teller machine and customer satisfaction there is positively very weak relationship (R^2= .181, p< 0.126). Meaning holding all other variables constant, automated teller machine will cause 18.1% change in customer satisfaction. It is proven by the results that, automated teller machine not only weak in explaining the relationship but the impact is also not significant as the significant level is 0.126 which is above the standard significant value of 0.05. Meaning the automated teller machine if it is not administered efficiently and effectively will have the tendency to impact on customer’s satisfaction insignificantly. This presupposes that the automated teller machines in question were not administered efficiently and effectively. Thus this study has proven empirically that it is not a forgone conclusion that having an ATM services will automatically leads to customer satisfaction making the assertion a fallacy in Ghana thus disproving the study by Sultan and Komal (2009) claiming that having an automated teller machine services will automatically lead to customer satisfaction. The study revealed that relationship between mobile banking services and customer satisfaction is positively very weak (R^2= .170, p< 0.171). This simply means that mobile services rendered by banks to their customers were seriously criticized as woefully inadequate. Thus, holding all other variables constant, mobile banking services causes 17.0 % change in customer satisfaction. This result proves that a unit change in mobile banking service will induce 17.0% change in the rate of customer satisfaction. In other words when the level of mobile banking services is improved by 1% it will lead to 17.0% increase in customer satisfaction which is quite negligible. The significance level of this outcome in reference to

the study results was 0.171 which is greater than the standard value of 0.05 indicating that the variance between mobile banking services and customer satisfaction was not significant. Internet banking services were quite effective and efficient thus having positive significant impact on customer satisfaction (R^2= .211, p< 0.003). But the relationship is equally weak explaining only 21.1% of customer satisfaction within the Ghanaian banking industry. The statistical understanding is that unilaterally internet banking service has the empirical tendencies to increase customer satisfaction by 21.1% if these services are improved just a percentage change. The practical connotation is that managers need to make automated teller machine more secured and very convenient spreading it across the length and breadth of the country. It should be in good function (twenty-four hours a day), accessible at all times (weekdays and weekends) and user-friendly as well. Again, managers should be proactive in sending message to customers whenever their system is malfunctioning in order to win customer trust. They should be ready to accept their mistakes and improve on customer complaint. They should avoid the rationalization of system failure which tend to put customers off serving as a catalyst for customer drifting. Again, internet connectivity should be reliable to boost mobile banking services.  The banks should create more mobile apps for the various product categories.  To sum up more resources should be allocated to online products since it is proven to be the only determinant significant in explaining customer satisfaction.

Index Terms — Electronic-banking, Customer satisfaction, Ghana, banking industry.