Bank interactions through the telephone-based access lie somewhere in the middle, with
moderate personal interaction (when the contact occurs through an human operator) mediated
by a technological device.
Alternatively, Dabholkar (1994) developed a classification scheme for services using
two dimensions: “who delivers and where is the service delivered?”. According to this
scheme, one could think of branch interactions as person-to-person contacts at the service
site, of ATM interactions as person-to-technology contacts at the service site (which
nowadays corresponds to a multitude of locations), of phone interactions as person-to-person
or person-to-technology contacts (depending on the answering system) at customer’s
home/work, and of Internet interactions as person-to-technology contacts at customer’s
home/work. As such, the technology-based delivery channels for the banking industry that
are discussed in the paper correspond to remote interactions mediated by technology, that is,
interactions between a bank and its customers occurring through the ATM network, the
telephone-based and the Internet-based access. The branch interactions are also covered.
Although there are four channels presented, the research and its results are to be analyzed on
a channel basis.
As the main purpose of the research is to understand the determinants of consumers’
usage decisions concerning the frequency with which technology-based delivery channels are
used, two streams of research are combined: consumers’ adoption of innovations and
individual consumption behavior.
Traditionally, consumers’ adoption of innovations is explained with cognitive,
rational reasoning (thinking). Cognitive determinants of adoption behavior are based on
beliefs about the attributes of a product/object or about the consequences of a behavior. In
this study, a model is proposed and tested that considers not only cognitive, but also affective
(feeling), emotional factors to explain consumers’ adoption of innovations. Affective
determinants of adoption behavior are based on the positive/negative feelings that interaction
with an object, or that a behavior, provoke. Additionally, individual consumption has been
found to be determined not only by utilitarian reasons, but also by an experiential perspective
(McGregor, 1974; Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982), in which pursuit of fun and enjoyment
directs customers’ behavior. So, a further objective is to find out if the experiential
perspective can be extended to the use of technology-based delivery channels.
The target behavior of the study is the usage frequency with which a delivery channel
is adopted for interaction with the firm. It is assumed that the usage frequency decision will
reflect the willingness to use a particular channel. Customers were questioned about the main