It is increasingly being recognised that service quality has a strong correlation with customer satisfaction. Researchers have debated the topic of private banking sector versus public banking sector in both Western and Far East countries, and found that the private banking sector outperforms the public banking sector in many areas, including productivity, efficiency, and profitability. However, literature and empirical studies on banking service quality in Libya are scarce, and this potentially impacts on organisation performance. This research aimed to assess and compare the levels of service quality provided by the Libyan private and public banking sectors to identify if there are significant differences between the private and public banking sectors in terms of service quality levels, as perceived by bank customers.\ud
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The research adopted a survey questionnaire based on the amended Banking Service Quality Scale. It included six service quality dimensions, broken down into 31 statements, for capturing the wide range of services offered by banks. A total of 2000 questionnaires were administered to customers of the two banking sectors (public and private) and 740 (370 from each sector) were returned, which amounts to a 37% response rate. The research findings show that there are significant differences between the Libyan private and public banking sectors in terms of customer perceptions of service quality and the degree of importance attached to various dimensions of service quality. The results also suggest there is a relationship between bank status and customers’ age, occupation, number of branch visits, and period of relationship with a bank. The study has revealed, however, that there is no relationship between customer gender and bank status. The research has significant implications for Libyan banks in terms of developing operational, marketing and human resource strategies, and can help Libyan banks to incorporate service quality issues into their strategic planning. The study may be useful for application in countries with a similar banking culture as Libya. This study contributes to the understanding of service quality in terms of the Libyan banking context. The added value of this study emanates from the fact the research was conducted in Libya (a developing country with an extremely limited amount of service quality research conducted therein), and the fact it measured and assessed the service quality in both Libyan private and public banking sectors which form, along with the central bank, the entire Libyan banking system