Service quality measurement in the Chinese corporate banking market

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to construct a measurement instrument to capture service quality in the Chinese corporate banking market. Design/methodology/approach – To create the measurement instrument, Chinese Banking Service Quality (CBSQ), constructs are utilised from the generic service quality literature and Chinese business culture. In addition, 18 financial managers were interviewed to identify how other aspects of the Chinese banking market could be included in the new instrument. CBSQ was administered to 259 corporate customers in China. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assist data reduction, test hypothesised models and refine scales. Findings – Factor analysis identifies that service quality in Chinese corporate banking is measured by a nested model, consisting of two higher‐order constructs (i.e. functional quality and technical quality) and four lower‐order dimensions (i.e. reliability, human capital, technology and communication). Research limitations/implications – The data were collected from corporate customers in China, and hence the findings of this paper may not be generalisable to other contexts. Practical implications – The presence of CBSQ is timely given the rapid development of the Chinese banking sector, allowing Chinese domestic banks and international banks to incorporate service quality issues into their strategic planning. Particularly, bank management could benefit from focusing their efforts on the four dimensions of CBSQ. Originality/value – This research contributes to our understanding of service quality in the Chinese banking market by creating CBSQ – a model to capture the quality of service provision in corporate banking. The utility of CBSQ for academics and practitioners is discussed along with avenues for future research.