Customer knowledge and choice criteria in retail banking

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of customer choice criteria in the retail banking market in the UK. Specifically, it investigated potential variations in the importance of various choice criteria,which were classified as either intrinsic or extrinsic in order to aid analysis with respect to customer financial knowledge. A database of 6700 respondents collected by a commercial organization was used in the analysis. The results suggest that all customers rely primarily upon extrinsic choice criteria when choosing a retail banking service. In addition, low financial knowledge is associated with a propensity to choose a bank purely on location or by recommendation and, whilst such factors are also important to higher financial knowledge groups, higher knowledge groups are more likely to take account of intrinsic attributes such as service features, rate of return and low fees in their choice.