Studenters förhållningssätt till valet av framtida bank
Since the middle of the 1980´s the Swedish bank market has experienced a change concerning structure and pressure of competition. Before the year 1985, the market was characterized as a market with few operators but have changed to a market with many operators and seen as one of the most intense in Europe where the four major banks; Nordea, Handelsbanken, SEB and Föreningssparbanken together have a strong position. Their market share has recently decreased, mostly for the benefit of foreign banks and niche banks. The Swedish market has experienced difficulties in generating profits which mostly depends on new establishments that have increased the pressure on competition, a low growth as well as weakened customer relations. The development has resulted in a growing importance of market segmentation, mainly by the fact that costumers have become more disloyal as a result of the increased competition.Students are a market segment of interest for the financial market, mainly because of the expectations of their positive financial situation in the future. Students are seen as an expensive group of costumers to attract and seem to be more disloyal towards banks than other customers. The banks in Sweden have developed specialized offers to attract students, these offers are estimated to be long-term investments. The purpose of this thesis was to examine how young intellectuals relate to the choice of their future bank. The main question at issue; ?What impacts have the defined key factors on young intellectual?s choice of future bank? was answered on the basis of a few defined key factors concerning consumer loyalty. The method used for answering the purpose of the thesis was a focus group discussion.One of the conclusions were that the major banks should not identify students as a homogenous group of costumers, mainly because there are many directions of education that leads to diverse banking needs in the future. Students? choices of future bank are also affected by surrounding and individual factors. Reasons to why students during their education are loyal to their bank were namely customer satisfaction, low involvement, inactiveness and undeveloped banking needs. The result from the thesis showed that students? disloyalty increases when they graduate from the university and develop different banking needs. The banks need to establish strong relations with the students before this crucial stage arise. Finally banks need to focus on building strong long-term relations and create stimulus for making the students remain as customers within the bank after completed studies. Since the offers from the major banks to students are similar, a distinct profile and a differentiation of the student offers should be developed.