Customer Engagement (“Vinculation”) as a Driver of Value Creation in Commercial Banking: Bridging the Internal Potential Market Gap-Evidence and a Structural Model for the Moroccan Banking Sector

This paper reconceptualises value creation in commercial banking around the notion of customer engagementtermed vinculation in continental relationship-banking practice -and tests it within a formal statistical framework. Departing from the acquisition-centric view that equates growth with client-share gains, we argue that the primary reservoir of value is the Internal Potential Market (IPM): the additional business mobilisable by raising existing clients to the market's average relationship intensity. We formalise the penetration-participation-vinculation triad, derive the IPM and its closure rate as measurable constructs, and specify a partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) in which product equipment, digital adoption and relationship tenure drive vinculation, which in turn drives per-client profitability and IPM-gap closure. We complement the structural model with a dynamic panel specification (system-GMM) to address endogeneity and reverse causality, and with quantile and robust regressions to assess the stability of the vinculation-profitability link across the client distribution. Using an illustrative calibration consistent with Moroccan retail-banking structures, the framework predicts that a ten-point increase in the vinculation index closes a substantial share of the IPM gap and lifts per-client profitability more than an equivalent increase in penetration. The study contributes a rigorous, replicable measurement apparatus for relationship intensity and offers managerially actionable levers for value creation in emerging-market banking.