Banking on change: uncovering the higher-order motivations behind bank-switching

Charlton Roux () and James Lappeman ()
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Charlton Roux: University of Cambridge
James Lappeman: University of Cape Town

Journal of Financial Services Marketing, 2025, vol. 30, issue 4, No 9, 14 pages

Abstract: Abstract While functional motivations for bank-switching are well established, this study adopts a three-phase qualitative approach to uncover the unresearched higher-order motivations that drive consumers to switch banks. Interviews were conducted with 39 bank customers over three waves, which allowed for functional motivations to be acknowledged and filtered out. This approach highlighted the higher-order motivations that are missing from conventional bank-switching models. The findings clearly reveal a spectrum of recessive personal and altruistic motivations, with the potential to influence bank choice. This research contributes to the discourse on retail banking by providing empirical evidence that banks focusing solely on functional offerings risk not only homogeneity in value proposition but also risk losing out to competitors who better understand the evolving base of consumers who are sensitive to higher-order motivations. The study isolates higher-order (values/identity/pro-social) motivations that shape switching. For management, the findings indicate that value alignment can tip decisions when functional offerings are at parity and point to actionable implications for segmentation, product design, and communication.

Keywords: Switching; Bank; Motivations; Higher-order benefits; Functional benefits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1057/s41264-025-00326-7

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