CONSUMER SWITCHING BEHAVIOR IN BANKING INDUSTRY: CAN CONSUMER BASE BE PURCHASED, OR EARNED?

Loyalty membership programs are widely used as a strategical tool in banking. In the paper a unique loyalty membership program in Turkey in which consumers are offered cash in order to convince them to switch their financial service provider, bank, is studied. Literature supports evidence for relationships between switching barriers and intention to switch, however literature lacks studies testing the assumptions of theories on consumer loyalty in specific industries. Exploratory in nature, the study tests the literature supported relationships based on a real life case. The paper aims to enligthen whether the consumers' loyalty can be bougth with cash and other provided benefits to make customers switch their current service provider into new account after a special loyalty membership program offered for an organization's employees. The purpose of the paper is to research effects of switching barriers on intention to switch in order to understand whether consumer base can be purchased, or consumers are earned. Structural Equation Modeling is performed with the data collected from a survey of 212 employees of an organization. The results suggest that, in banking sector, imitable switching barriers are not useful against switching intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]