A study on choice criteria and information channels in the south of Finland
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2019
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Finance
Language
en
Pages
65 + 16
Series
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to reveal what criteria have the most impact on Finns when they are choosing a bank. Additionally, I aim to discover what information channels Finns value and how trusting they are towards bank advertisements. Surprisingly nearly a quarter of those who answered are exclusively customers at the bank in which their parents opened their first bank account. The most common reason as to why they haven’t changed banks is that they simply have not seen a reason to do so. From a bank’s perspective it would be prudent to find out how willing these individuals are to change banks if they were to discover that some other institution offers better services. Out of those who answered 40,80% have changed their primary bank and the most common reason for doing so is better mortgage terms. For 53,66% better mortgage terms have played a part in their decision and for 35,37% it was the only reason that has made them change banks. The most important choice criteria are easy to use online banking services and diverse online banking services. This indicates that banks must especially focus on developing their online services. What makes this difficult is that people seem to demand that they be able to do most of their banking on their own computer but at the same time it must be simple. There were no major differences in the importance placed on these services between genders, different age groups, or different income levels. Surprisingly mobile apps do not seem to be as important as I originally thought. Easy to use mobile app is only the fifth most important criterion and a diverse mobile app is only the ninth most important. But there are differences. For those aged under 50 years these criteria are both in the top five whereas those aged over 50 years ranked them as 11th and 13th. This indicates that the importance of mobile apps will further increase in the coming years and in order to stay competitive banks must focus on developing their mobile services. Easy access to service and the quality of service are ranked third and sixth respectively. Even though younger generations seem to place slightly less value on service it is still one of the most important criteria. For banks this means that even though the importance of online and mobile banking is going to be even more significant than it is now they should not make compromises in the quality and accessibility of traditional service. Branch location occupies the 18th place and is thus the least most important criterion. Those aged over 50 years ranked it as the 14th most important but it is still clear that it`s importance has radically decreased. Insurance services ranked surprisingly low. Access to insurance services is the 17th most important criterion while the quality of insurance services is 16th. The most important information channel is individual`s own research. The second most important is word of mouth, third is news media, and only fourth most important is bank advertising. In addition to ranking it so low Finns also don’t seem to especially trust bank advertisements giving it an average score of 5,36 on a scale from zero to ten. This seems to indicate that Finnish bank advertising has very little effect on conscious decision making.Description
Thesis advisor
Puttonen, VesaKeywords
bank, choice criteria, information channel, advertising