Bank Customers´ Channel Preferences for Requesting Account Balances

Electronic applications in banking have enhanced customers´ ability to control the balances and latest transactions of their bank accounts. Many banks today offer this service also via mobile channel further improving customers´ capability to use the service anytime anywhere. This paper analyses online bank customers´, namely Internet and mobile users´, diverse electronic channel preferences for requesting account balances. Conjoint analysis is used in order to measure the utility these two groups of customers attach to different attributes of electronic channels. The results show that the two groups of customers face different needs in consumption of the service. While mobile users put the greatest attention to flexible service access point, the Internet users value the screen size of a device the most. The results suggest Nokia communicator type of device as an optimal channel for current mobile users, while those currently without experience in mobile banking show no interest in devices smaller than personal computer