The Mediating Role of Trust in E-Banking: The Interplay between the Web Site’s Perceived Quality and Commitment towards the Bank

Trust is one of the key elements needed to create and maintain relationships with customers in any kind of exchange. Although studying trust is generally well established, and despite disagreements on its conceptualisation, few researchers have studied trust in an online environment, in particular banking web sites. This study addresses the following issue: can the quality of a web site in itself guarantee customers' commitment to a long-term relationship with their banks? What is the role of online trust? The aim of this study is to propose and then to test an explanatory model targeted to apprehend the existing relationships between these three variables in an e-banking context. What relationships will prevail? Direct and/or indirect ones? Our study examines the banking sector in Tunisia. Data collection has been collected through a face-to-face survey of customers of Tunisian banks. A questionnaire has been designed by selecting items from scales validated by previous research. Our objective is to know about customers' perception of electronic service quality, online trust and commitment towards their banks. The obtained results highlight the important role of the quality of the bank's online service in the long-term relationship with its customers by establishing trust which, in turn, induces their commitment to the bank. The findings of this study revealed that there is no direct relationship between the website's perceived quality and commitment. Moreover, the study revealed that customers' reluctance to commit to their banks relates to lack of their on-line trust despite a good perception of the web site's quality.