The region-of-origin effect on the preferences of financial institution's customers: Analysis of the influence of ethnocentrism

Abstract

The financial crisis that started in the USA in 2007 has obliged many small financial entities in southern Europe to undertake mergers in order to comply with the stability and solvency policies established by the European Central Bank. In Spain, this situation has led to a profound restructuring of the financial system, obliging many of these institutions to decide whether or not to maintain their regional brand identity after such a merger. The purpose of this study was twofold: on the one hand, to analyze the importance customers attach to the origin of their usual financial institution and the relative utility they give to the three levels of brand origin presented: regional, national and foreign, and, on the other, to assess whether consumers’ level of ethnocentrism modifies their preference structure and, if so, to identify the profile of the individuals composing each segment. The technique of Conjoint Analysis was applied to a survey of 427 customers. The results showed the bank's to be the attribute with the greater importance in forming customers’ preferences than other characteristics of the institution such as the treatment by employees, the location of offices, the electronic banking services, and the number of social activities the entity carries out in the region. In addition, the respondents prefer regional brand origin over national and foreign. Both the importance and the utility attached to the regional brand origin increase with higher levels of consumer ethnocentrism. The findings of this study will serve to these entities as a guide for their decision-making regarding brand management.

Lorry Park Selection Criteria and Drivers’ Preferences: A Study from the UK

“…The validity and reliability of this model were assessed through Pearson's R and Kendall's tau statistics. The closer these two indicators are to 1, the greater the reliability and validity of the analysis because there is a strong correlation between the predicted values in the model and the actual observed values [43]. The Pearson's R and Kendall's tau correlation coefficients for this conjoint analysis are 0.990 and 0.909 respectively.…”

Successful turnarounds in bankrupt firms? Assessing retrenchment in the most severe form of crisis

“…In this context, saving banks and credit unions were no longer closely linked to the territories ( Comunidad Autónoma or, at a lower level, provincia ) in which they were created (such as Bancaja in Valencia or Catalunya Caixa in Catalunya). Consequently, SMEs, bound to their regions of origin, were the most affected by this concentration process, given that their key source of financing came from saving banks or credit unions (García-Gallego & Chamorro Mera, 2016).…”

Between love and boycott: a story of dual origin brands

“…Nevertheless, we find that the majority of previous studies limited their investigations on analysing ethnocentrism from the national perspective among countries (Lee and Mazodier, 2015; Truong, 2018), disregarding that this concept can also be applied on more local or regional level within one community or country (Ahmed et al , 2018; Fernández-Ferrín et al , 2017; Fernández-Ferrín et al , 2018). However, some literature highlights ethnocentrism on a regional level (Fernández-Ferrín et al , 2018; García-Gallego and Chamorro-Mera, 2016; García-Gallego and Chamorro-Mera, 2018; García-Gallego et al , 2015). For instance, Fernández-Ferrín and Bande-Vilela (2015) analyse the Spanish regional ethnocentrism, indicating that strongly identified consumers with their regions believe in the superiority of their regional products and consequently favour the purchase of regional over non-regional products.…”