تاثیر متغیرهای اجتماعی جمعیت شناختی بر رضایت و وفاداری مشتری در صنعت بانکداری خصوصی با تحلیل واریانس (ANOVA)

ABSTRACT The influence of socio‐demographic variables on customer satisfaction and loyalty in the private banking industry

In this paper we investigate the influence of value and customer satisfaction on customer loyalty in the private banking industry. In order to test for differences in the evaluation of service value, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty that are caused by socio-demographic variables, we conduct an analysis of variance (ANOVA). As the majority of customer satisfaction research is concerned with consumer goods or the retail industry (see e.g. Oliver, 1981; Swan and Trawick, 1981) and therefore a low-involvement setting, we are able to make use of a unique data set of 286 usable questionnaires of private banking customers (high net worth individuals, HNWIs) and thus conduct our analysis in a high-involvement context. We use partial least squares (PLS) (see Ringle et al., 2005) for the estimation of the model.

The theory of customer satisfaction is based on the confirmation/disconfirmation paradigm which postulates that satisfaction is the result of a comparison between the customer’s expectations and the perceived performance. In case the perceived performance is equal to (exceeds) the expectations, confirmation (positive disconfirmation), and thus customer satisfaction will be the result; else, negative disconfirmation, and dissatisfaction will prevail (for an extensive discussion on confirmation/disconfirmation and customer satisfaction see Oliver, 1980, 1981; Swan and Trawick, 1981; Churchill and Surprenant, 1982; Woodruff et al., 1983; Cadotte et al., 1987; Halstead et al., 1994). Customer loyalty is viewed as “a deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future [y]” (Oliver, 1999, p. 34).

However, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty are not ends in themselves but rather have direct economic consequences such as a higher profitability and market share (Anderson and Sullivan, 1993; Anderson et al., 1994). As the acquisition of new customers is costly, companies that generate the main part of their revenues with their existing client base are more profitable than companies that heavily rely on business with new customers (see Anderson and Fornell, 1994; Mittal and Lassar, 1998; Johnson and Gustafsson, 2000). Besides cost savings, loyal customers generate additional sales via repurchasing (Mittal and Lassar, 1998; Johnson and Gustafsson, 2000). Reichheld and Sasser (1990), for example, argue that service companies can nearly double their revenues via the retention of an additional 5 percent of their customers (see also Heskett et al., 1994).

The private banking industry is not different in that respect: as word-of-mouth is the main source to acquire new customers, the private banking industry is highly dependent on a satisfied and loyal clientele (Datamonitor, 2006). However, only a limited number of private banking service providers systematically tracks the satisfaction and loyalty of its customer base (Mercer Oliver Wyman, 2005). Hence, it is not surprising that more than 25 percent of HNWIs are dissatisfied with their private banking service provider (Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, 2009). This is even more puzzling as it takes on average 11.6 months to acquire a new customer in private banking (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2003).

Our analysis contributes to the literature in the following: first, we show that the assessment of service value, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty is influenced by several socio-demographic variables. Consequently, marketing researchers might want to use these socio-demographic variables as controls in their research as they are a potential source of otherwise unobserved heterogeneity and thus wrong conclusions might be drawn. Private banking service providers should take these differences into account as well when approaching their clients or conducting a customer survey. Second, we are able to show that the effect of perceived value on customer loyalty is mediated via customer satisfaction. This is of interest for marketing researchers as customer satisfaction might be tested for mediating effects in future studies. Furthermore, our findings caution not to wrongly conclude that perceived value has no influence on customer loyalty. This finding is relevant for practitioners alike as they should not only pay attention to customer satisfaction but perceived value, too. Third, we are able to use a sample of private banking customers for our research. Due to the confidentiality of the business, the empirical literature is scarce. In summary, our study contributes to the scant private banking literature and offers insights which are of interest to both, practitioners and marketing researchers.

The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 provides an overview of current customer satisfaction literature with a special focus on effects caused by sociodemographic variables. Section 3 presents the model and the hypotheses to be tested. Section 4 summarizes the methodology and gives an overview over the sample used for the empirical estimation. Section 5 presents the results of the empirical analysis. The managerial implications as well as implications for further research are discussed in Section 6 while Section 7 concludes.