Exploring the mediating effect of customer satisfaction on the relationships between service quality, efficiency, and reliability and customer retention, loyalty in E-banking performance in emerging markets

This study aims to explore how customer satisfaction (CS) serves as a mediator in the connections between service quality (SQ), efficiency and reliability (EAR), customer retention (CR) and customer loyalty (CL) within the E-Banking industry in Bangladesh. The empirical experiment employed a survey approach, with 380 participants completing a Google form as the primary data collection method. The data was collected in Bangladesh, a developing country, from 12 January to 5 February 2023. Convenience sampling was employed for data collection, utilizing a questionnaire-based survey. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM), and for the study’s robustness, an advanced simultaneous equation modeling econometrics technique was applied. The study identified a positive correlation between SQ, EAR, CR and CL, where in CS played a mediating role in this association. The empirical evidence presented in this article contributes to a deeper comprehension of the interrelationships involving SQ, reliability, and efficiency, along with CS, retention and loyalty. This understanding benefits the services sector, especially banks, as it improves SQ, reliability and efficiency, fostering CL and retention through enhanced CS. The model suggested in this study has a big effect and capture accurately the dynamic nature of customer-banking relationships.