Factors That Influence Initial Trust Among International Students in Internet Banking (KOOP Bank)

As technology advances, people are becoming more dependent on internet based services such as online shopping, online consultations, e-banking. It facilitates and speeds up their decision making process, their transactions and purchases that nowadays are literally “a click or a touch away”. In addition, a variety of alternatives is offered to users which enables them to switch easily from a company to another, and this puts more pressure on the service provider to stand out among the rivals. Trust plays a significant role in the online world due to lack of direct personal interactions throughout the transactions’ processes. Initial trust is even a more complicated concept to build between a business and its customers since customers are not familiar with the firm which increases their perception of risk. This study is based on internet banking services that are offered through the website. KOOP bank, a national Turkish Cypriot bank is the bank understudy. The main purpose of the research is to test a suggested model about initial trust’s antecedents. Those factors are perceived reputation of KOOP bank, its perceived willingness to customize, the perceived ease of use of the website, the perceived usefulness, the perceived security control, the perceived interactivity and the website’s visitor trust propensity. The data was collected from 340 International students currently studying in Eastern Mediterranean University in TRNC. Only 301 responses were taken under consideration since the others were no longer at their initial stage of trust with the bank. Based on the analysis’s results, trust propensity and the website’s usefulness were not supported showing insignificant predictive power over initial trust. But there was a positive strong relationship among all of our factors and initial trust. This research includes discussion of the findings and recommendations to KOOP bank’s management. Nonetheless, there has been a few limitations to the study that were discussed in our last chapter, in addition to suggestions of future studies. Keywords: Initial trust, Internet Banking, Northern Cyprus, KOOP Bank, Perceived Reputation, Perceived Willingness to Customize, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Security, Perceived Interactivity, Trust Propensity