Against the background of growing competition in the global marketplace, understanding customers, is a significant aspect of marketing. In the search for competitive advantage, there is a need to measure service quality to better understand its antecedentsa nd consequencesa, nd establish methods for its improvement. In the Libyan economy, the banking sector is one of the most important. Its significance increased after the 2003 lifting of the United Nations sanction. This was followed by entry to the sector of a number of domestic and multinational firms. Despite this increased competition, domestic banks are still widely considered to suffer from low levels of service quality. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the actual level of service quality provided by Libyan public commercial banks as perceived by their customers. A modified SERVQUAL model was developed to measure service quality in Libyan commercial public banks. The resulting instrument is intended to help these banks to measure their service quality and focus on the service quality dimensions of most importance to their customers. It also aimed to gain an understanding of cultural and environmental influences on service quality in the Libyan banking sector, and their effect on banking management practices. It is also expected that this instrument, and its results, will contribute to future research into service quality. The findings of the present study have produced some important results. Firstly, the level of service quality offered by the Libyan public commercial banks as it was perceived by their customers was relatively high. Secondly, the theoretical five-factor structure of the SERVQUAL model was not confirmed in the Libyan banking context, and the service quality structure in the Libyan context appears to be four-dimensional. Furthermore, the study offers suggestions to banking managers to allocate their resources more efficiently to the most important dimensions, i. e. reliability and tangibles, to improve service quality, since the factor analysis indicates that these are the most important dimensions to customers. Finally, reflections on the methods used to modify SERVQUAL to make it more sensitive to a particular cultural context have implications for future researchersin terms of methodology, method and data analysisbiosynthesis pathway is present and essential for Acanthamoeba growth. We have cloned and sequenced the sixth enzyme in this pathway, imidazole glycerol-phosphate dehydratase (IGPD) (EC 4.2.1.19), from A. castellanii. This enzyme is the molecular target for 3-amino-1, 2, 4-triazole (3AT), a commonly used commercially available herbicide. The growth of A. castellanii was restricted by 3AT and this inhibition was ablated in a dose dependent manner by the addition of histidine to the medium. 3AT was also not toxic to RCE cells. This demonstrates that 3AT acts specifically to inhibit IGPD and that the histidine biosynthesis pathway is present in A. castellanii. This study provides the first evidence of the histidine biosynthesis pathway in a protozoan and demonstrates its potential as a target for therapeutic intervention during Acanthamoeba infection.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:544489 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Campbell, Sara Jane |
| Publisher | University of the West of Scotland |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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