Customer’s perspective on customer data usage in mobile banking context

Abstract Digitalization provides various opportunities for organizations to collect, analyze and exchange a massive amount of customer data. However, the extant research on customer data usage has mainly focused on how this could benefit firms and ignored the perspective of the customers. The purpose of this study is to explore how customer data can create value for customers in mobile banking context. Customers are increasingly aware of firms’ (e.g. banks) interest to collect data and are becoming more conscious about giving away their personal information. This forces firms to think how to use customer data to explicitly benefit also customers. Along with the recent research within service and customer-centric logics that emphasizes customer-oriented thinking, there is a growing need to explore customer data usage from the perspective of customers. This paper presents an empirically grounded qualitative, exploratory study. The data was collected through 23 in-depth interviews among Finnish mobile banking customers and it was analyzed using theory-based content analysis method. Findings suggest that customers still have difficulties to understand the possibilities that customer data collected by companies could bring to them. The attitudes towards banks collecting customer data are primarily negative and customers do not see much value in banks’ use of customer data. Theoretically, this study contributes to extant service research by exploring this under-researched topic in a timely context, i.e. mobile banking services. In addition, the opportunities and challenges brought by digitalization into customer data management is a topic that needs further research attention. From the managerial perspective, understanding the reconfigured role of customer data helps in creating new ways to serve customers better, which will result in engaging customers into long-term relationships and thus creating more value for both the service providers and their customers