An Assessment of the Perceived Service Quality: Comparison of Islamic and Conventional Banks at Pakistan

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate how service quality is perceived by customers of Pakistani Islamic and conventional banks keeping the focus on three major cities of Peshawar, Karachi and Islamabad. This study also seeks to find out elements of service quality that are more important for bank customers. Out of 1000 distributed questionnaires, 520 were collected back including 190
responses from Islamic banks’ customers and 330 from conventional banks’ customers. Sampling was done using convenience sampling technique. For data analysis, descriptive statistics and ttests were used. The results indicate that customer perception is relatively highest on the assurance dimension of Islamic banks and on the tangibles dimensional of conventional banks; however customer perception is lowest in the technology and responsiveness area of Islamic banks. The study also indicates that overall perception about service quality is highest in Islamic banks. The study suggests that Islamic banks can improve their service quality by improving their internet facilities and online services. Conventional banks can improve their services by comprehensive
training of employees.