Author(s): Takesure Zhowa, Zeleke Worku
Contemporary mobile and hand-held technological devices have become the 21st century addiction and are “friends-in-hand” for the Generation Z consumer cohort. In contrast, from the marketer’s perspective, mobile devices connote a “brand-in-hand” which offers an important opportunity for marketers to reach and retain particularly the young consumer regime. In recent years, bank marketers became optimistic about growing business opportunities in view of high adoption rates of mobile devices by youths that arguably has reached a peak of 80%. This paper argues that unless the remainder is examined, it is likely to increase and present marketing challenges to businesses. Using a purposive sampling technique, this paper explores drivers of resistance behaviour specifically to self-service retail banking innovations. A total of n=388 youths in Generation Z cohort participated in the study by completing a 50-items questionnaire designed in the dimensions of technological, social, psychological and economic dimensions. The cohort signifies a consumer segment comprising educated, technologically savvy, and have the propensity to influence other consumer segments. The results show that 78% of participants use self-service banking technologies with 22% not using them. This finding is significant in that it confirms the literature that adoption rate of self-service technologies in general has reached 80% whereas the remainder resisting their use. The age distribution shows that most participants are 17-19 years (59%) whereas those aged 20-22 years constitute 41%. A factor analysis involving varimax rotation yielded a four-factor solution where technological, economic and psychological factors satisfactorily account for the resistance behaviour towards self-service retail banking innovations. The variables constituting a factor specifically relate to youths and thus raising new insights that assist retail bank marketers to align contemporary modern marketing innovations to this specific consumer segment.