Segmentation of Banking Industry Customers Based on Their Attitudes and Financial Behavior

Segmentation is one of the most useful tools for a better understanding of customer diversity, and managers can allocate marketing activities efficiently and effectively to homogeneous and prioritized customer groups. Earlier research on the segmentation of financial services customers show that these studies often rely on socio-demographic information and are less paid to psychological and behavioral variables that indicate why customers are selected and preferred. Therefore, the present study aimed to segment the banking industry market based on the attitude and financial behavior of customers.

In order to discover the desired segments, studies were done based on the theme analysis. Then, through a survey of internal and external experts, the indicators were formulated in 56 questions and distributed among the 30 clients as a pre-test. After pre-test confirmation and determining of the sample size, questionnaires were distributed through random cluster sampling and finally 355 full questionnaires were received.

Based on factor analysis, 14 attitudinal factors and financial behavior were identified and analyzed using cluster analysis of participants in four sections: Paid Savers, Financial Experts, Independent Concerned Spenders and Indifferent Followers.

Bank customers have significant differences in terms of demographic characteristics, attitudes and financial behavior. Therefore, in this research, in order to improve the level of customer interaction with the bank, they are divided into four groups and appropriate marketing solutions and recommendations for each of them were presented.