Determining Factors of Malaysian Customers Patronage of Foreign Bank

Two hundred questionnaires, which were considered as complete, acceptabe and usable, were reveived from the customers of the thirteen foreign banks with regards to the area of Kuala Lumpur. Questionnaire was developed to examine the major factors considered most important in the process of selecting a foreign commercial bank in Malaysia by demographic groups and socioeconomic characteristic. Moveover, this study was also designed to identify the perceptions of Malaysian customers concerning the services offered by bank between demographic and socioeconomic characteristic.
The data were analysed by using SPSS programme. T-tests one-way ANOVA was applied in order to determine the significant relationships for the ten hyphotheses at 10 percent level of significant. The findings revealed that foreign bank selection criteria are significantly related to gender, level of education, monthly income usage frequency of bank. Meanwhile, factor analysis with varimax rotation was used to identify underlying dimensions in the set of foreign bank selection criteria and usefulness of services offered by foreign bank. The results suggest that there were seven factors considered most important namely 'service quality', 'credit availability and price competition', 'word of mouth and differentiation', 'delivery system', 'ambiance', 'bank reputation' and 'convenience'. In terms of usefulness of services, three factors were found important which ara 'service facilities', 'consumer convenien' and 'convenience and account held'. Besides all these analysis, percentage and frequency distribution were also used to analyze the respondent profile.
For the determinants of foreign bank selection criteria results, the study reveal that some criteria are viewed as having more importance than other criteria according to the demographic and socioeconomic segmentation. When asked why they patronize foreign banks, overall the respondents gave answers similar to those found by other researchers, plus reasons specific to the Malaysian context.