Research on the Influencing Factors of Consumers’ Loyalty to Their Bank in Azerbaijan

Today, banks are developing very rapidly, the variety of products and services is increasing and the competition between banks is intensifying. Meeting the needs and expectations of customers arising from banking services is essential both to retain existing customers and to gain new customers. For this reason, the concept of customer loyalty has increased its importance in the banking sector. The increase in competition conditions in the banking sector makes customer orientation inevitable in banks. The fact that the product variety in the banking sector is almost the same in all banks requires banks to make a great effort for customer loyalty. The main purpose of this research is to determine the relationship between bank choosing criteria and customer loyalty in Azerbaijan, and how this relationship changes because of demographic factors. Therefore, the study possesses two objectives; firstly, to examine the relationship between bank related influencing factors and customer loyalty. Secondly, to determine how educational and income level of respondents affect this relationship. Data was obtained through convenience sampling, from a sample of 192 respondents by using a self-administered questionnaire. SPSS Amos was used to analyze the collected data. Based on the mean calculation questionnaire results were analyzed to assess the cause-result relationship between bank related influencing factors and customer loyalty. A t-test was used to analyze whether those factors differ significantly according to education level, while Analysis of variance test and Tukey test were performed to analyze whether the variables differ significantly according to monthly income. As a result of research, it has been revealed that employee behavior, bank products accessibility and product diversity have positive effect on customer loyalty, while the interior and exterior view of banks do not significantly affect customer loyalty. Additionally, the research suggests that in contrast to the relationship between employee behavior and customer loyalty, in all other cases, individuals with a higher level of education and higher monthly income consider more factors when choosing a bank.