Understanding drivers of consumer loyalty in the banking industry

Abstract

The banking industry, which plays an essential role in any economy, is characterized by customers choosing a bank in early adulthood. For this reason, Generation Z is currently the emerging cohort of consumers in the banking industry, and understanding their behavior is paramount to a bank’s success. In this paper, we (re)consider a model of the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty in the context of Generation Z, separately analyzing individuals with high financial literacy and those with low financial literacy. The results suggest that individuals with low financial literacy, as compared to individuals with high financial literacy, rely more heavily on subjective cues (such as customer feedback) when recommending to others and creating cognitive loyalty and that these customers tend to remain loyal primarily due to inertia. The findings have important implications for banks that need to segment their consumers according to their financial literacy (high vs. low), – as satisfaction, cognitive loyalty, willingness to recommend, and behavioral loyalty are driven by different mechanisms in the two segments.