Rapid changes in the financial services environment increased competition by new players, product innovations, globalization and technological advancement have led to a market situation where battle for customers has become intense. In order to rise up to the challenges, service providers are even more interested to enhance their understanding of consumer behavior patterns. This paper examines the forces that can act as barriers in mobile banking service adoption. A quantitative survey sheds more light on this research issue. The data was collected from a survey in the Northern region of India and includes 330 respondents.
In
addition to offering branch-based services via new delivery
channels, technology allows banks to offer new value-added
services, which are only available in an electronic environment,
such as personalized financial information menus, Short Messaging
Services alerts, and real time brokerage. The existing and
envisaged changes in the technologies of service delivery
have the potential to affect the full range of retail services
(Vesala, 2000). Recent innovations in telecommunications have
opened up an additional channel for electronic banking. The
market potential exists for mobile banking, which would enable
customers to bank virtually anywhere, and at any time. Wireless
devices may outpace personal computers in market penetration,
and many are sophisticated enough to serve as access points
to the Internet and to private networks. They may even function
as hand-held PCs in their own right (Kiesnoski, 2000). According
to Barnes and Corbitt (2003), new mobile data services (such
as mobile banking) can be understood as convergence of Internet
and mobile phone technologies, each of which has already profoundly
affected consumer behavior in the last few years. Using a
variety of platforms, services are being created to enable
mobile devices to perform many activities, which earlier have
been available only as Internet services.
In
the financial services industry, the major changes brought
about by developments in information technology involve particularly
the link between consumers and firms, and the generation of
new products (Devlin and Wright, 1995). Undoubtedly, there
has been a reshaping of the behavioral patterns that exist
between consumers and their financial institutions. Today,
customers can easily access and obtain information on different
suppliers of banking services and hence make comparisons,
and one might expect customer loyalty to diminish as a consequence.
Yet, although consumer empowerment is discernible at a general
level, it is debatable to what extent the shift is truly evident
in banking because of the nature of financial services. |
