Evolution Of Customers’ Segmentation Techniques In Retail Banking

In the context of a highly competitive market influenced by legislative changes, the technology evolution and the changes of customer’s behavior, traditional banks must be able to provide the services and products expected by customers. The most important method in retail banking by which a bank can interact with as many customers as possible to ensure satisfaction and loyalty is the notion of customers’ segmentation. The current situation from the perspective of customers’ expectations will be brought to your attention, as well as the future situation from the perspective of legislative changes and which are the main variables and techniques that allow us a relevant customers’ segmentation in this context. The challenges and opportunities of the Directive PDS2 (Payment Service Directive) [7] will be analyzed, which together with the results of a study carried out by Ernst & Young "The relevance of the challenge: what retail banks must do to remain in the game" [5], make me say that now, more than ever, commercial banks must pay special attention to customer‘ segmentation. The objective of this paper is to present the evolution of the customers’ segmentation process starting from the 50’s – 60’s, when the first segmentation techniques appeared, until now, when because of the large quantities of data, there are used increasingly advanced techniques for extracting and interpreting data.