Employees or technology‐based services: a practical study of predicting brand equity within the UAE retail banking context

This paper, for the first time in the literature, not only investigates the role of online service quality in establishing bank equity, but also testing this role on the existence of employee‐based services. A survey was designed and data was collected from a convenient sample of bank customers who use both online and employee‐based services. AMOS 18 was used to test the hypothesised relationships. Quality factors of employee‐based services were found to be stronger predictors of a bank brand's equity compared to online service‐quality factors. All employee‐based service quality factors, except that of assurance, had a significant and positive relationship with brand equity. On the other hand, e‐scape was the only online service factor that had a positive and direct impact on brand equity. The proposed model of the relationship between quality and equity has the potential to help bank managers to establish their brand equity through managing the level of their online services as well as the quality of employee‐based services.