Exploring How Consumers Build a Preference for Financial Institution Brands Through the use of Bank Services. An analysis of consumer needs and identities

Financial institution brands are brands that everyone has undoubtable interreacted with. As a result, banks do not necessarily have the opportunity to target and select their desired clientele. Instead, they must tailor their services to every possible client. Therefore, this study will seek to explore and understand how consumers build a preference for financial institution brands to ultimately provide insight towards future marketing practices. This study also takes a self-categorization perspective to understand how bank clients ponder different financial services to ultimately build a preferred brand. It is also through the social self and private self that it was possible to study financial services and ultimately build a holistic approach to studying brand preference of financial institutions. This study took a qualitative approach to understanding the building process of consumer brand preference. A non-probability snowball sampling method was taken to collect the sample. It was then through semi-structured in-depth interviews that 18- to 24-year-old Canadians were interviewed. By understanding the contributing factors of this building process will allow banks to better understand and target this customer segment. It was through theory driven themes that inferences were made from the acquired data. These themes were competency, autonomy, consumer benefits, convenience, corporate social responsibility and external validation. The data has shown that the theme of external validation was the most prominent, the interviewees became members of their banks as a result of convenience and external influences, particularly their parents. Although this is a significant finding, customers have not necessarily built a strong preference, instead they build a very utilitarian relationship with their banks. External, social self, motives lead consumers to becoming members of a bank, whereas private self factors such as competency, autonomy and convenience contribute towards the long-term relationship building process. Contrary to what the theory has discussed, themes such as prestige and social status were rather uncommon, bank customers were mostly focused on what they personally need in terms of financial services. It is therefore important for banks to target prospective clients at a very young age or through their parents, as it is rather unlikely that they will change financial institutions later on. Future marketing experts will have a better understanding of their target audience and financial institutions will be able to provide better services for their customers.