An Exploration of Retail Banks’ Selection Criteria: A Case Study of University Students in North Wales

This study aims to provide marketing decision makers in the banking sector with a useful insight into the bank selection criteria of a profitable niche segment of university students. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to examine a sample of 152 respondents chosen from a student population in North Wales using a systematic random sampling method. The findings reveal that the most important bank attribute is electronic banking, which influences the students’ selection process for which bank to subscribe to owing to the first factor, which is the banking speed, and the students’ lack of time and impatience with traditional systems. The second and third most important factors include service efficiency and financial benefits respectively. The least important factors found in this study are attractiveness and third party influence. Determining the factors that students consider the most when opening their accounts is critical for bank segmentation strategies. From a review of the relevant literature, none of the studies to date have published the buyer behaviour of a student segment in a Welsh context. Therefore, this study attempts to fill the gap in the literature through an empirical analysis of the bank selection criteria adopted by students in North Wales.