A Study on the Relationship between Switching Barriers and Customer Retention of Commercial Banks’ Customers

• Main Authors: Huang,Siao-Wen, 黃小紋
• Other Authors: Chow,Wayne S.
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/74167205166198978722

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 企業管理學系 === 95 === In recent years, the financial industry in Taiwan suffered from more and more competitions, which resulted from enormous changes in the economic and financial environment. So the banks are eager to create their own competitive advantage. The costs of attracting new customers are increasing, and retaining the existed customers effectively causes the enterprise to attain more benefit instead. Therefore customer retention is a quite important topic. Customer satisfaction is always regarded as the key factor to retain customers, but some evidences reveal satisfaction is not the only one strategy. There are still other factors which influence the customers to choose to stay or not. Dick and Basu(1994) found the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty is non-linear. They also suggested switching barriers might be the reason for non-linear existence. We conducted an empirical study in Taiwan’s commercial banks and discussed the relation among switching barriers, customer satisfaction and customer retention. After establishing the motivations and goals of the research and defining the empirical industry, we review literature related to switching barriers, customer satisfaction, and customer retention and develop the framework and hypotheses. In order to examine the hypotheses, we use structural equation model. The findings of research not only develop the connection model among switching barriers, customer satisfaction, and customer retention but also find the relationship in the switching barriers. The findings of research are as follows. (1) Switching costs have direct and positive impacts on customer retention. (2) Social benefits influence customer retention positively through satisfaction. (3) Confidence benefits influence customer retention positively through satisfaction and switching costs. (4) Special treatment benefits have direct and indirect impacts on customer retention. In the indirect effect special treatment benefits influence retention through switching cost.Furthermore, theoretical contributions, empirical conclusions, and future study suggestion are provided in this study.