Retail customers bank and digital service channel preferences

As of today's point, the diversity of service channels used by banking institutions to deliver their services to their customers has increased throughout the process from the first days of banking applications to today. And particularly in this first quarter of the 21st century, thanks to the new opportunities provided by the development of technology, it has increased more than ever before. Especially in recent years, the fact that digital technology applications have become more involved in people's lives has led banks to use the possibilities of digital technology channels as much as possible to deliver and offer their services to their customers. This tendency of banks has caused some significant and fundamental changes in the banking ecosystem. Initially, a customer had to go to the branch of that bank in order to receive service from the bank, but nowadays, customers can now perform the banking transactions they need by choosing among the various service channels offered by the bank, without having to go to a bank branch. As a result of all this, it is seen that today the technological and digital service channels of banks have become an important factor in determining customer preferences. In this thesis study, the effects of this change in the banking ecosystem on customer preferences due to technological developments up to the present day have been tried to be explained. In the research, a survey application was organized to find out how the bank and bank service channel preferences of individual bank customers are affected and what are the factors affecting these preferences, channel usage frequencies, channel satisfaction levels and digitalization expectations for bank services. 1,163 participants who are individual bank customers participated in the survey conducted throughout Turkey. In the questionnaire scale developed for this research, 87 statements were directed to the participants on 5 basic topics under a total of 7 questions. 32 statements to learn about the factors affecting bank preferences, 14 statements to learn about the factors affecting bank service channel preference were directed. And 16 statements to learn the difference between digitalization expectations of the customers from bank services and the real situation were directed. 18 statements to learn the frequency of bank service channel usage and satisfaction level from channels and lastly, 7 statements were directed to learn whether customers were affected at the point of access to bank services during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the data obtained by the survey application and the analyses made using SPSS 26 and AMOS 24 programs, it was seen that the survey scale used was appropriate. According to that, Cronbach's Alpha values indicating the validity of the scale and KMO values indicating its reliability were obtained for each expression group. As a result of the Explanatory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses, it was found that the scale was valid and compatible. Then, Regression and t-Test analyses were performed and research hypotheses were tested. According to the results obtained, it was found that 7 factors were effective at the point of bank preference of its individual customers, while 3 factors were effective at the point of service channel preference. In addition, it was concluded that the customers' expectation from the banks about the digitalization of the bank services is higher than current services provided by banks. Besides that, it was concluded that the difference between the real situations is significant and the effect is large, and that digital services affect customers' bank and service channel preferences. It has been observed that the satisfaction of the customers from the service channels affects the bank preferences as well as the frequency of channel usage, and there is a significant difference in satisfaction between traditional channels and digital and call centre channels. Lastly, the participants stated that they had not experienced any disruption in the access to the bank services they needed during the COVID-19 pandemic process and that they were satisfied with the general attitude of the banks during this period.