Choice criteria in retail banking

• Autor(a) principal: Cagnina, Pietro
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/21826
• topic: Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

This study strives to understand the relevance of different choice criteria in the selection of a retail bank. Based on the answers of 152 US consumers to an online questionnaire, we first determined the importance of seven criteria through conjoint-analysis; the most important one was shown to be branch location, followed by quality of service and cost. We then found that consumers can be grouped into three segments depending on their preferences on evaluative criteria: a balanced-choice group, a location-oriented one and lastly a cost-oriented group. Our questionnaire also measured level of financial knowledge, both subjectively and objectively, enabling us to test the following hypothesis: is there a relationship between financial knowledge and evaluativecriteria? A positive answer was found. More knowledgeable consumers considered different criteria or focused on cost, while less knowledgeable ones tended to heavily rely on location. Our findings carry relevant strategic implications for retail banks, suggesting to pay particular attention to restructuring of branch networks, given how important is branch location for a relevant group of customers. This study provides also a segmentation tool useful for the targeting of different groups of consumers.