BANKING LOYALTY BY SME CUSTOMERS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF THE HONG KONG MARKET

Customer loyalty has been the subject of extensive marketing research in recent years in a number of areas, including financial services. However there has been far less work into the extent of, and reasons underlying, loyalty by business customers. This paper reports on a qualitative study which investigated the extent of loyalty and the reasons underlying banking behaviour by business customers from the small to medium enterprise (SME) segment in Hong Kong. Results from seventeen in-depth interviews have identified a number of factors influencing business customers' behaviour in the choice of, and use of a financial services provider. Lack of loyalty appears to be the norm in this group, with only three interviewees using one bank exclusively, posing a challenge to banks efforts' to build loyalty and share of wallet by their business customers.