FACTORS INFLUENCING THE SELECTION OF E-CHANNELS BY BANK CUSTOMERS

Abstract

The author has chosen a topic titled, Factors influencing the selection of E-channels by Bank Customers. The present study aims to rate the importance towards the selection of e- channels. At present most of the private sector banks offers various schemes to attract the customers. This research study is based on the primary survey where data were collected from customers residing in the study area. The customers are classified based on Age, Gender, Annual income and Education. The rapid advancement in electronic distribution channels has produced tremendous changes in the financial industry in recent years, with an increasing rate of change in technology, competition among players and consumer needs. Increasing competition among banks and from non-bank financial institutions also raises concerns as to why some people adopt one distributional channel and others do not, and identifying the factors that may influence this decision is vital for service providers. New services are difficult to evaluate where the quality of trustworthiness dominates. 1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM: In today's banking environment, it is becoming difficult to build and maintain strong and lasting relationships with customers. In fact, the challenges of building strong customer relationships have become even greater for banks with the emergence of e-business, diffusion of innovations and agile new competitors in the banking sector. The introduction of customer relationship management has provided banks with a driving philosophy, a re-oriented information system and a communication tool that helps to create invaluable and knowledge based relationships. Therefore, banks are developing a continuing long-term business relationship with customers and they are shifting their focus from market share to mind share of customers. Customer relationship management is about identifying a company's best customers and maximizing the value from them by satisfying and retaining them. As a business philosophy CRM is seen to be firmly rooted in the concept of relationship marketing, which is aimed at improving long-run profitability by shifting from transaction based marketing to customer retention through effective management of customer relationships. Technology is fast altering the business service scope. The Internet has facilitated convenience in customer interactions and transactions with the banks. E-banking is currently emerging as a new approach in India for providing improved accessibility and expediency to customers. Most banks have their own websites for improving the customer interface and offering online services. 1.3 SAMPLING DESIGN AND SAMPLE SIZE. The researcher has adopted convenient sampling technique to collect the opinion of the sample respondents regarding the selection of e-channels. The researcher has approached 100 customers and issued the structured