Consumer behaviour
Postbank Profitability Factors
This study (which is not open to the general public) investigates which items are involved in choosing bank and product, financial planning, and changing banks.
Contact: Peter Fontein
The study entitled Postbank Profitability Factors, commissioned by the Postbank, looked into the relations between a great number of consumer variables and choice of bank and product. The aim of the study was to improve our understanding of how consumers can be properly targeted so as to increase the Postbank’s profitability.
Various sources (such as economic-psychological literature, published marketing scales, studies dealing with values, and results of previous research commissioned by the Postbank) have identified a large number of consumer variables relating to consumer choice of bank and product. The list of variables comprises items such as service quality, brand value, image, the role of reference groups, need for outsourcing, risk perception, the significance of money, sensitivity to returns, and customer loyalty. Each item – depending on its kind – was assessed on its importance to the respondents, on its applicability to respondents, and on which banks or products respondents associated with the item. Then the relation of these variables with the consumers’ financial behaviour was investigated, taking into account the concept of the ‘services ladder’, meaning that consumers tend to use banking services in a more or less predetermined order with the aid of a probability mechanism.
The research results have improved our understanding of which items are involved in consumer choice of bank and product, financial planning, and changing banks. The degree to which the various items play a role proved to be greatly dependent on the consumer’s position on the ‘services ladder’.
Publications:
The publications produced by this project’s contract research component are not open to the general public.
Determinants of saving and investment behaviour
Understanding people’s saving behaviour is important in developing economic theories and models: it helps to take better decisions in economic issues.
Why do people save money? We know little about that. Understanding people’s saving behaviour is important in developing economic theories and models: it helps to take better decisions in economic issues.
Five comprehensive questionnaires were developed in 1993 in aid of this savings study. Submitted for the fifteenth time in 2007, these questionnaires deal with the following topics:
- Labour: questions on paid labour, job-hunting behaviour, pension fund contributions.
- Housing: questions on the type of house, homeownership or tenancy, house-hunting behaviour.
- Income: questions on income from paid labour, from social security arrangements, or from assets or allowances.
- Assets: questions on savings, investments, cars, yachts, etc.
- Psychological aspects: questions on expectations for the future, motives to save, inheritance, game situations showing what values people attach to money and people’s readiness for risk-taking in financial decisions.
The data give us a unique, multi-year picture of the financial ins and outs of Dutch households. For more information, see DNB Household Study.
Insurance Agency and Broking Act
Evaluation study on the introduction of the Insurance Agency and Broking Act
Contact: Klaas de Vos
This study for the Ministry of Finance has been carried out in consequence of an agreement between the government and the insurance sector, in the context of the ‘Free Market, Deregulation, and Legislative Quality’ operation. Competition and the free market system in the distribution of insurances have been investigated by means of surveys among brokers, insurers, consumers, and businesses. In particular, we looked into the situation before deregulating changes were to be made to the Insurance Agency and Broking Act (zero-measurement) compared to the situation after changes were made (post-measurement), before proceeding with further deregulation measures.
Publication:
- Vos, K. de, Fontein, P.F. (2001), Marktwerking en concurrentie in het assurantietussenpersoonkanaal, CentER Applied Research, Tilburg.
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