Understanding Customer Switching Behaviour in the Retail Banking Sector: The Case of Nigeria and the Gambia

This thesis examines customer switching behaviour in Nigeria and Gambia, focusing on the retail banking sector. The study’s key objective is to provide new knowledge on customer banking behaviour in the retail banking sector. The study is grounded in Bansal et al.’s (2005) push-pull-mooring model. A qualitative method was employed in the data collection, incorporating a triangulation approach, whereby direct observations were combined with thematic interviews and focus group discussions. The intention behind this method was to increase the validity of the research results. Ultimately, the study findings indicate significant factors and subfactors influencing customer switching behaviour in the retail banking sector. The results are categorised as push, pull, or mooring factors. It identifies seven push factors with thirteen subfactors, four pull factors with ten subfactors, and six mooring factors with three subfactors. The study’s significant contribution to existing knowledge of services marketing is the identification of new and emerging constructs, thus extending the existing knowledge in the literature. The study’s findings support numerous results of prior relevant research, while some findings disagree with those of previous research.
Furthermore, the new constructs that emerge from this research are highly relevant to today’s consumers. For example, factors like banking products, perceived knowledge of banking products, perceived relative security of banking products, satisfaction with the current bank, emotions (e.g., regret or anger), liquidity challenges, bank staff career development prospects, and ethical banking issues are the study’s unique contributions to the push factors and subfactors. In addition, the emerging pull factors and subfactors include technological advancement, coronavirus pandemic-induced switching, a bank’s physical appearance, positive banking expectations, a bank’s relative proximity, expected switching benefits, perceived usefulness of a bank’s digital platforms, perceived ease of banking transactions, personalised banking offerings, and repositioning banking business models. Lastly, the new mooring factors and subfactors identified in this study are inertia, changes in customer needs or tastes, involuntary switching, and bank responsiveness. Consequently, the author has developed a framework/model based on the findings of this study. The new framework/model presented comprehensive results with practical implications and a valuable contribution to the current knowledge of customer switching behaviour.