Bank Choice Determinant Factors: A Study of University Students in Metropolitan Kano

Abstract

The student market is fast becoming an important market niche which might henceforth prove difficult to ignore as a result of the ever increasing competitive commercial banking organizations. This is consequent to the fact that only college educated individuals have a significantly higher than average chance of rising from the low income group into the middle class. These pools of students are usually attracted to banking products/services through the influence of specific organizational and personal related factors. Thus, it is assumed that these factors of attraction can equally aid in the retention of this unique market segment thereby ensuring the much needed industry competitiveness and profitability. Hence the need to have a pre-knowledge of such factors for the formulation of relevant marketing strategies becomes necessary. This study examines the relevant choice criteria of banking products/services: reputation, service quality, financial gains, convenience, group influence and information availability among University students in Kano city, Nigeria. The study is limited to 357 final year students of Bayero University, Kano who were selected by employing the probability simple random sampling technique. A total of three hundred and fifty seven (357) multiple choice and structured questionnaire were administered to elicit responses for the achievement of research objectives. Out of the three hundred and fifty seven copies of questionnaire, 265 copies were retrieved, 14 were discarded for improper completion and the remaining 251 copies were utilized in final analysis indicating a usable response rate of 70%. Further, the result from the one sample T-test and independent test of statistical difference indicates that all the six choice criteria are statistically and significant factors of influence on bank choice decision among the students. The criteria of convenience, reputation, service quality, financial gains, information availability and group influence are ranked as most important in descending order, and there is no statistical difference among the male and female students in all the choice criteria with the exception of financial gains. In line with these results, banks were advised to streamline their marketing strategies in accordance with these identified choice criteria while dealing with the emerging lucrative student market segment.