Conceptual Mapping of Retail Banking: A Correspondence Analysis Approach

Iran’s banking industry became more competitive in past decade. In this new era understanding the position of bank in customers minds compare to competitors help bank managers to formulation more effective marketing. This paper attempted to reveal the position map of five selected banks including: MELL, MELLAT, TEJARAT, PARSIAN and PASARGAD.at the first phase of the research, in-depth interview was done with 25 participants for detecting factors effect bank selection. Via content analysis and using axial coding, seven axial codes were identified: the speed of providing banking services, facility and loan, electronic banking service, customer orientation, trust, physical evidences in branch, breadth of branch network. An 18-items questionnaire was constructed and gathered from 300 respondents from the selected banks. Competitive map was portrayed by simple correspondence analysis. Two dimension were recognized based on the map, the first was banking orientation (classic, modern), and the second was competitive advantage (facilitation of customer access, customer welfare and interaction). Four quarters were identified based on different composition of these dimension. PASARGAD bank was placed in the modern banking and customer welfare/interaction, MELLI bank placed in the classic banking and customer welfare/interaction, MELLAT and PARSIAN banks placed in the modern banking and customer access facilitation and TEJARAT bank placed in the classic banking and customer access facilitation quarter.