Self‐service technology and online financial service choice

The application of self‐service technology in transaction‐based e‐service (e.g. online financial services) creates a challenge for firms: what combination of features should they offer to satisfy needs from different customer segments? This paper seeks to address the above question by highlighting similarities and differences of consumer preferences among self‐service, hybrid service and professional service segments for online financial services.

This study employs a web‐based discrete choice experiment, in which 1,319 consumers were offered different account alternatives, which include features for self‐service and professional assistance, price per transaction, and promotion offers.

The results demonstrate that overall, consumer preferences for features of online financial services differ across segments. Moreover, with the variation in the strength of self‐reliance, interesting trends regarding the relative importance of features are observed. With the given customer segments, this study also identifies several demographic features with significant effects on the choice of service alternatives through a multinomial logistic model.

The authors believe that these results have both managerial and research implications for design and operations strategy formulation for online financial services.