Examining the Relationship Among Customer Experience, Bank Image, and Trust: A Multichannel Banking Perspective

Abstract

This article aims to validate Schmitt’s dimensions of customer experience in multichannel banking (both traditional and electronic banking) contexts. Additionally, the article investigated the relationship of customer experience dimensions with image and trust in a multichannel banking context, and also analyzed if image mediates the relationship between customer experience dimensions and trust. Moreover, the article examined whether these relations differ with the banking channel in use. Thus overall, the study explored a four-dimensional relationship, i.e., customer experience with bank image/branch context, customer experience with trust/branch context, customer experience with bank image/electronic context, and customer experience with trust/electronic context. 834 multichannel banking customers’ data was used to validate the scale by using the double approach of EFA and CFA, as well as tested the model by using PLS-SEM. Several complimentary metrics, such as PLS-Predict and Blindfolding (Q 2) were applied to check the results’ robustness. The findings revealed that customer experience scale is context specific. Additionally, the impact of CE dimensions on image and trust is found to vary with the channel in use. The study also revealed that bank image has the effect of complementary mediation between most of customer experience dimensions and trust in both branch and electronic banking, as per the decision tree of Zhao et al. except for the relation between cognitive dimension and trust, where image has the effect of indirect only mediation in traditional context.