Angel Fernández Nogales

Focusing resources for customer loyalty: An application to the Chilean banking industry

A model is proposed that should enable banking industry executives to better focus resources on loyalty programs by determining which factors are most valued by customers in their decisions to stay with their present bank. The model factors include intangibles drawn from concepts of intellectual capital that influence customers’ perceptions of image, service quality, satisfaction and loyalty. A structural equation model developed for the Chilean banking industry and incorporating eight factors that impact the loyalty of current account customers found that those with the greatest direct effects are satisfaction, image and quality while those with the strongest indirect effects are attention to customers and personalization.

How to support the management of intangibles

The main objective of this work is the application of the concept of intellectual capital to management for business development and innovation. Concretely, we propose strengthening the ‘Intellectus’ model of intellectual capital by combining it with a multicriteria methodology called the ‘analytic hierarchy process’. The proposed methodology seeks to facilitate decision making by managers in focusing actions and resources to innovate and improve the value of their services to their clients. In particular, an application was made to the banking service sector in Chile, to identify the intangibles of greater importance in loyalty-building of clients. We identified technological capital, human capital and business capital as the intangibles with the highest priorities.