Determinants of banks selection in USA, Taiwan and Ghana

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to investigate bank choice/selection criteria in a range of cultural and country economic scenarios. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to understand international consumers' selection criteria of banks using the USA, Taiwan, and Ghana as illustrations. Design/methodology/approach - Following a literature review, the paper adopts the classical multi-step scale development process which demanded that thorough attention be paid to every step of the process. The study employed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the reliability of the results. Findings - The study reveals three key dimensions/factors/strategies that are consistent across all three economies. The paper concludes that open and liberalized business climate appear to explain consumers' decisions. Research limitations/implications - This research is based on the college student cohort and thus the results do not represent the public. This poses generalizability questions without further replications and validations. This study did not examine whether there were consumers' switching behaviors involving banks. Practical implications - Insights derived from this study will provide bank managers and advertising executives with the building blocks for understanding consumers' choice criteria of banks in industrialized, newly industrialized and liberalized developing economies. Originality/value - A comprehensive validated scale measuring international consumers' selection of banks is proposed. In view of the scarce stream of empirical studies dealing with consumers' selection of banks in liberalized developing nations, this research comes at an opportune time, as several governments in these economies are encouraging bank savings, channeling college students' loans through bank accounts and proactively attracting global banks to establish branches in their countries. This study complements the extant literature dealing with consumers' selection of banks. Finally, a cross-national and cross-cultural dataset of consumers' choice criteria of banks have been put forward that would enhance further appreciation of the subject of banks selection in varying economies.