Loyalty, naivety and powerlessness among Norwegian retail bank customers

The quantitative analysis presented in this paper builds on a qualitative focus group study of mobility among bank customers. The main finding from the focus group study was that mobile bank customers had a reflective - often critical - relation to their banks, while the immobile bank customers had an unreflective - often trusting - relation to their banks. The study also resulted in a typology identifying different bank customer orientations. In the present paper, this typology has been operationalized and modified for further quantitative estimation and investigation. Nine different bank orientations are distinguished, and the results indicate that at least two of three bank customers do not regularly monitor their banking terms and conditions. In other words, it is reasonable to believe that the ordinary bank customer is not acting as expected according to the theory of well-functioning market mechanisms. Resourceful consumers, with high incomes and education levels, tend to be more financially oriented than others. When people with meagre financial resources tend to end up in the more unfavourable banks, this is not solely a result of the banks' own discrimination of the poor; it is also due to the fact that people with high incomes and education levels are more likely to monitor their banking conditions than people with low incomes, irrespective of whether or not they have bank loans. The quantitative material analysed was collected in February 2007 by computer-assisted telephone interviews. One thousand randomly selected respondents answered the questions.