Customer Loyalty and its Determinants in a Banking Services Environment
Author:Alina Filip, Laurenţiu-Dan Anghel
JEL:M31
DOI:
Keywords:research, banking services, customer behaviour, customer loyalty, relationship marketing.
Abstract:
The present paper presents the methodology and the main results of a quantitative study
applied on a sample of 1010 respondents, in the Romanian banking industry. The aim of the
study was to research the customer level of loyalty toward Romanian organizations acting
in the retail banking sector. According to similar researches in the field, loyalty is a
complex construction, which comprises both psychological and behavioural components,
fact also proved by the results of the present research. As the survey results show,
Romanian customers remain in relationships with banks due to the existence of both
favourable attitudes or positive motivations (representing 46,36% of the total retention
motivations) and constraint factors or inertia (representing 52,44% of the total retention
motivations). At the same time, the results prove that the level of loyalty stated by
customers is supported not only by the level of satisfaction, but also by factors like: bank’s
attitude towards its own customers, the level of customer trust toward the organization or
its employees in ensuring the financial interests of clients, and also by the level of customer
commitment. Customer switching behaviour is determined in 58% of cases by the high
level of dissatisfaction toward the banks’ policy of price.