Factors affecting loyalty of Internet Bank customers
Transcription
Factors affecting loyalty of Internet Bank customers
Advanced Social Humanities and Management 2(1) 2015:52-59 www.ashm-journal.com Factors affecting loyalty of Internet Bank customers (case study: Keshavarzi(Agricultural) Internet Bank customers in Tehran) Mona Rezai Koupai Dr.Zahra Alipourdarvish Dr. Soheila Sardar ISLAMIC AZAD UNIVERSITY North Tehran Branch Abstract The study is done aiming to investigate the factors affecting customer loyalty of Agricultural Internet Banking. The research method used is descriptive and type survey-correlation. The study population is those customers who have an account in the bank and have used bank Internet services. Study model was evaluated with a sample consisted of 384 customers using cluster sampling method. Data necessary were collected from a questionnaire that its validity was tested. The data was analyzed in LISREL software and by applying tests of structural equation model and confirmatory factor analysis. In this study, the impact of trust, perceived value and satisfaction on customer loyalty of Internet Bank were examined. The findings show the impact of variables of perceived value and trust on satisfaction and the impact of satisfaction and trust on the loyalty of customers. Results also show that perceived value is not directly impact on customer loyalty. Keywords: customers' loyalty, internet banking, trust, satisfaction, perceived value. Problem statement Today, the marketing researches, as one of the most important tools to form the basics of management decisions, is very important, so that in organizations familiar to modern marketing thinking, adopting many critical decisions is related to performing of these studies. Marketing in its evolution stages is where the marketers don’t only think of finding new customers. Today, the objective of marketing is demand management through the development and maturation of the customer in loyalty to the organizations. Loyal customers are valuable resources for organizations because it is easier to sell to an old customer than a new one. What is important today is that customer satisfaction is no longer enough and companies should not be satisfied with their customers' consent, they must ensure that their satisfied customers are also loyal? The fact that it is necessary to consider the customer loyalty, both in theory and in practice, as the core of marketing is getting clear more and more. Recognition of loyalty and its effective variables in recent years has been highly regarded by managers and researchers. Due to the fact that in different cultures, loyalty is influenced by various factors, so this study seeks to examine the factors affecting the loyalty in internet banking customer and help organizations to increase revenue. So the main question in this research is that which factors are effective on customer loyalty of Agricultural Internet banking in Tehran. Importance and necessity of research Customer loyalty is considered the key to business success. Loyal customers do more repurchase and raise the market share. Above all loyal customers do not simply change their company affected by advertising of the competitors. Increasing the customer loyalty, market share and profitability of the firm and basically possibility to survive and compete with other banks are also increased. In Internet banking industry, providing more services and benefits accrued on internet banking (lower cost, higher speed and accessibility, increased profitability), online customer loyalty and maintaining Internet banking customers becomes more important. Customers who are familiar with the brand are more likely to recommend it to their friends and relatives, these are of vital importance in modern business environment due to the importance of customer loyalty for growth of 52 Advanced Social Humanities and Management 2(1) 2015:52-59 www.ashm-journal.com organization, understanding of the concepts of loyalty are very important. The lack of such knowledge may cause service institutions to choose wrong indicators to measure customer loyalty and as a result, they get into trouble in planning loyalty programs and understanding the true behavior of customers. Given these results, it seems the problem of online customer loyalty has a special place so the researches done in this area should address the factors that lead to increase online loyalty and continuity to use the Internet banking by the customers. Introduction Customers or clients are counted to be reasons for existence and continuation of life of every organization and, therefore, it is essential to review various aspects of customer satisfaction.Many customers may seem to be satisfied but they may switch to competitor companies for various reasons. Loyal customers constitute a major factor for organizational successes and there are many attempts to create loyal customers. The customer loyalty was defined as commitment of customers to deal with a particular organization or buy given goods repeatedly.Customer loyalty plays essential role on the success of business owners and it is the primary source of building successful business models. Aghaei et al. (2013) studied the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty in one of Iranian banks using SERVQUAL scale and a researcher-made questionnaire and examined service quality and customer loyalty, respectively. They reported a significant relationship between different aspects of service quality and customer loyalty in this particular branch of bank. Esmaeili et al. (2013) performed an investigation on the effects of loyalty on banking industry and reported that “satisfaction” was the most influential component influencing customer loyalty formation with an 87% diagnose coefficient. Ghane et al. ( 2011 ) studied the relationship among e-satisfaction, e-trust, e-service quality and eloyalty in a case study of an Iranian e-banking and reported similar result. Asgarian (2013).performed an investigation on Iranian bank service quality in private sector by applying SEVQUAL method. The study reported that with the development of electronic commerce, internet banking could be considered as an alternative for developing, operating and offering bank services. Mouakket and Al-hawari (2012) presented findings about the antecedents of e-loyalty intention towards online reservation among 288 respondents in the United Arab Emirates. They examined the role of e-service quality, hedonic and utilitarian values, satisfaction, and subjective norms in motivating loyalty intention towards online reservation. They reported that e-service quality had a significant influence on hedonic and utilitarian values, which, in turn, influenced on customer satisfaction. 2. Theoretical background and research model In addition to measurement issues, development of an understanding of the conceptual relationships Perceived value Customer loyalty Customer satisfaction Trust Fig. 1. The research model 53 Advanced Social Humanities and Management 2(1) 2015:52-59 www.ashm-journal.com 2.1. Customer loyalty Attracting new customers is an expensive process and it actually turns profitable in later stages of customer’s relationship with the firm. This relationship could be less costly only when a customer becomes loyal to the firm. There are different approaches to loyalty and one of them is called stochastic approach. In this approach, loyalty is a behavior and whenever a person buys a particular brand regularly, he/she is considered to be loyal to that brand (Kuehn, 1992). This approach cannot differentiate between spurious loyalty and true loyalty. The other approach considers loyalty as an attitude. According to Assael (1992) loyalty is customer’s favorable attitude towards a brand which results in occurrence of repurchasing behavior. According to Zeithaml et al. (1996) loyal customers are interested in having good relationship with the organization and they normally behave differently. Loyal customers have more emphasis on social and emotional values and studies have revealed that creating and delivering superior customer value could contribute to an organization’s efforts in building strong emotional relationships with its customers (Butz & Goodstein, 1996). Thus, loyalty in such customers can be improved by providing superiority in specific aspects of customer value. 2.2. Customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction has been one of the most common measurement metric of customer perceived concepts used by businesses (Gupta & Zeithaml, 2007) because it is considered as a generic metric and can be used for different industries. Although there is not a precise definition for this construct, it is easily understood by mangers and customers. According to Kotler (1997) customer satisfaction is defined as the difference between the level of perceived performance and customer’s expectations. Thus, customer satisfaction is not only the outcome of the perceived performance of the product, but also it reflects customer’s expectations and a comparison between these two elements will determine customer satisfaction. In other words, when the customer expectations do not match with his/her perceptions, customer dissatisfaction appears. Fornell (1992) performed an empirical study on Swedish customers and revealed that although customer satisfaction and quality play important roles for most organizations but there are industries such as banks, insurance, mail order and automobiles where customer satisfaction is more important since it creates more loyalty. Ioanna (2002) reported that product differentiation in a competitive environment like the banking industry is almost impossible since banks often offer similar services. For instance, there is usually little difference in the prices charged for similar financial products. Thus, banks try to differentiate themselves from their competitors mostly by improving the quality of delivered services. In them banking sector service quality is one of most fundamental factors impacting satisfaction level. However, Reidenbach (1995) stated that customer value is a more viable factor than customer satisfaction since it considers the cost of products in addition to other important factors. Customer value is a dynamic construct and must be controlled whereas customer satisfaction is customer’s response to the values obtained from purchased products. Therefore, banks or insurance companies must understand how customers define the value so that they could create value added services. There are some evidences that indicate there is a positive relationship between the customer value and satisfaction (Anderson & Mittal, 2000, Yang & Peterson, 2004) Thus, our first hypothesis was: H1. Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on customer loyalty. 2.3. Perceived value Recently, ‘‘both managers and marketing scientists have begun focusing on the hitherto ignored role of customer value as a key strategic variable to help explain repeat purchase behavior, brand loyalty and relationship commitment’’ [Patterson. Spreng,1997]. Perceived value is often assumed to involve a consumer’s assessment of the ratio of perceived benefits to perceived costs [Zeithaml,1988]. Bolton and Drew [Bolton. Drew,1991] suggested that perceived value is a ‘‘richer measure of customers’ overall evaluation of a service than perceived service quality.’’ According to Parasuraman and Grewal [Parasuraman. Grewal ,2000], perceived value is a function of a ‘get’ component (the benefits a buyer derives from a seller’s offering) and a 54 Advanced Social Humanities and Management 2(1) 2015:52-59 www.ashm-journal.com ‘give’ component (the buyer’s monetary and non-monetary costs of acquiring the offering). Our study was primarily focused on information, system, and product/service quality as the ‘get’ component, and on money spent as the ‘give’ component. Prior studies explicitly modeled perceived performance or quality as a direct antecedent of value, which, in turn, directly drove repurchase intention. Also, cumulative insights from prior studies supported the general notion that perceived value contributed to customer loyalty [Dodds, K.B. Monroe,1991]. Anderson and Srinivasan suggested that when the perceived value was low, customers would be more inclined to switch to competing businesses in order to increase perceived value, thus contributing to a decline in loyalty. Thus, the next hypothesis was: H2. Perceived value has a positive effect on customer loyalty. Literature relating to service management has argued that customer satisfaction is the result of a customer’s perception of value received [Hallowel,1996]. Perceived value is considered a construct that captures any benefit-sacrifice discrepancy in the same way that disconfirmation does for variations between expectations and perceived performance. However, satisfaction is primarily an affective evaluative response. H3. Perceived value has a positive effect on customer satisfaction 2.4 trust Both university and economy equally describe trust as a central factor helping boost of electronic commerce. Rousseau et al. (1998) described trust as “a mental state including tendency to accept of damage based on positive expectations of opponent tendencies and behavior”. Trust can decrease unreliability caused by other people, objects and therefore, it is essential for commerce. It also has an impact on customers' fear of risk and unreliability. In electronic commerce where there is only source of information for overcoming website unreliability, trust in website maintains the highest importance because it is one of the most effective ways for decreasing customers' unreliability. Especially, trust in online environment is important because of variety and complication of online transactions and unreliability and unpredictable behaviors. Therefore, the consumers should be sure about seller not abusing and actions like unfair pricing, breach of privacy and security and presenting wrong information (Weisberg et al., 2011). The concept of trust has been examined in various fields during years. Researchers in various fields agree on the relative importance of trust in doing human jobs but it seems that there was a wide lack of agreement on an appropriate description. Trust has been described in different forms, including: tendency to vulnerability in opponent activities (Mayer et al., 1995), the likelihood that a person connects to cooperating behavior by opponents (Hwang &Burgers, 1997), a person’s believes in the other person that the opponent will behave predictable (Luhmann, 1979). Many people believe that trust is in agreement with the perception of risk. In a wider concept, trust is a psychological phrase, which includes tendency to accept damage based on positive expectations of objectives or other's behavior (Midha, 2012). According to Melao (1964), trust is a key member in appearing and keeping social trade relationships. Bradach and Eccles (1989) considered trust as a control mechanism, which facilitates trade relations with the characteristics like uncertainty, vulnerability and dependency. Customers normally look for decreasing unreliability and online trades' complications by using mental shortcuts. Trust is one of these effective mental shortcuts, which can act as a mechanism to decrease human behavior complications under some special circumstances that people have to cope with unreliability. Since the key of successful economic trades is to avoid opportunistic behaviors, online customers generally avoid online sellers in which they do not trust or known as bad (Fang et al., 2011). Ratnasingham (1999) suggested trust technology term and defined aspects of security services like secret mechanisms, identification confirm mechanism, and access to control mechanisms, which leads to increase of technology trust in an empowerment process for supporting privacy, accuracy, correctness, authorized trustee, answering electronic trade transactions (Granber-Krauter & Faullant, 2008). Therefore, important precursors for continuity of trade relationships are customers' beliefs and tendencies associated with trust in seller's website. Thus, we formed the hypothesis 55 Advanced Social Humanities and Management 2(1) 2015:52-59 www.ashm-journal.com H4. Trust has a positive effect on customer loyalty. H5. Trust has a positive effect on customer satisfaction Research hypotheses H1. Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on customer loyalty H2. Perceived value has a positive effect on customer loyalty. H3. Perceived value has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. H4. Trust has a positive effect on customer loyalty. H5. Trust has a positive effect on customer satisfaction Variable Perceived value Trust Customer satisfaction Customer loyalty Total questionnaire Relevant questions 7-1 10-8 Number of Questions 7 5 Cronbach's alpha 0.91 0.76 15-11 3 0.89 19-16 4 0.84 19-1 19 0.95 Inferential statistics The model coefficients is significant The model is estimated coefficients, standard 56 Advanced Social Humanities and Management 2(1) 2015:52-59 www.ashm-journal.com Summary of research results of hypotheses Research hypotheses H.1Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on customer loyalty H2. Perceived value has a positive effect on customer loyalty. H3. Perceived value has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. H4. Trust has a positive effect on customer loyalty. H5. Trust has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. Coefficient of correlation R2 tvalue Results 0.72 0.518 5.35 accepted -0.03 0.0009 -0.25 rejection 0.73 0.532 10.83 accepted 0.18 0.0324 2.25 accepted 0.21 0.0441 3.52 accepted According to the first hypothesis test results, it seems that satisfaction with the coefficient of determination of 0.518 has a significant positive impact on the loyalty among customers of Agricultural online banking. Therefore it can be concluded that the more the internet banking customers are satisfied with the internet banking system including the bank internet service the more they use it. Accordingly, banks should emphasize the importance of consent in Internet customers more than before. Such results are also obtained in studies by Kotlar and Clark in 1987 who examined the consent in internet banking. Given these findings, the following recommendations are offered to Bank officials: 1. Promote the approach of market-orientation to precisely identify the customer needs, and planning to meet the needs and their consent. 2. Analyse the weaknesses in the provision of internet banking services and its continuous improvement in terms of security, ease of use, speed and... According to the second hypothesis test results, it seems that the perceived value had no impact on loyalty among online customers of the Agricultural Bank. In this context, the following recommendations are provided to the managers of the Bank: 1 - Due to the new nature of electronic services in developing countries and lack of familiarity for customers to use all features of Internet bank, managers and authorities should address it through free training 2 - Simple design of Internet bank page so that the customer with any level of education can use it. According to a third hypothesis test results, it seems that the perceived value with the coefficient of determination of 0.532 had a significant positive impact on consent among customers of the Agricultural Bank internet banking. Therefore, it can be concluded that the greater the perception of bank customers about the value of using internet banking systems they use it more. Anthropological studies in different fields show that the easier processes and mechanisms the new system used by public follow, the public tend to use it more (Davis, 1989). Studies by Chintzy (2007) are only part of studies which emphasized the need to provide appropriate conditions for further understanding of the value of Internet banking systems to encourage all customers to use the service. In this context, the following recommendations are provided to the directors of Bank: Due to the lower cost of electronic services, the authorities should establish virtual offices to perform all operations required by customers and reduce costs of using Internet bank services to attract new customers and keep their customers. According to the fourth hypothesis test results, it appears that the trust with coefficient of determination 0.0324 had a significant positive effect on customer loyalty in internet banking of Agricultural Bank. Studies by Azar and Aydin in 2005 prove this result. According to the findings, the following strategies are presented to the directors and officers of the bank: 1. Establish a reliable and secure payment systems 2. Allows quick and easy connection of customers with bank via telephone, email, and SMS 3. Through one of the several methods (Online, Email, ...) sent a confirmation letter to the customer to ensure that the payment has been done correctly. 57 Advanced Social Humanities and Management 2(1) 2015:52-59 www.ashm-journal.com Given the fifth hypothesis test results, it appears that the trust with a coefficient of determination of 0.441 has a significant positive impact on the consent of customers of Agricultural Internet banking. Thus, we can conclude that the more Internet bank customers are confident in the internet banking system, they will use it more. Studies by Yudo et al., (2003) has demonstrated this result and emphasized the need to provide online customer trust to use Internet banking services. Based on these findings, the following recommendations are offered to bank managers: 1. Website should inform well about the security, security policies, contacts information in emergency conditions, technical descriptions and the functions of the electronic payment system 2. 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