An empirical examination of customer advocacy influenced by engagement behaviour and predispositions of FinTech customers in India

Introduction

Since the liberalization of the financial services industry in India in the 1990s and the global financial crisis in 2008, the financial sector has undergone a series of changes and reforms. In India, the passage of the information technology (IT) Act of 2000 provided much-needed momentum to financial technology (FinTech) operations by establishing legal validity. With increased internet usage, the reduction of entry hurdles, and the easing of regulations, the post-crisis period from 2010 saw a tremendous rise in the use of financial technology (Feyen et al., 2021). FinTech firms provide financial services on digital platforms by combining innovative business models and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), social media, data analytics and robotics acting as enablers. FinTech is setting a new paradigm in the design and delivery of financial products and services through alternative channels (Lee & Shin, 2018). The key service offerings emerging on digital platforms in India include peer-to-peer (P2P) lending services such as Lendbox, Shiksha Financial, payment services such as Google pay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM, personal advisory services such as FundsIndia.com, Scripbox, PolicyBazaar, and BankBazaar, among others (Cyrill, 2018). India's digital payment is predicted to comprise 2.2% of the world's payments which is poised to reach $12.4 trillion in another 3 to 5 years (Payments Council of India and PWC Report, 2020). The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has ushered in a new era of contactless mobile banking. Retail payments in India through various digital channels rose from $37.7 billion in financial year (FY) 2018-19 to $48.35 billion in FY 2020-21 (1 US$ = Rs 74.25, 03 August 2021) and mobile phone usage for banking operations in India grew from 61% in 2017 to 87% in 2021 (RBI, 2021). India along with China accounts for the highest FinTech adoption rate of 87% compared to the global adoption rate which is at 64% (Ernst & Young, 2017). An increase in the adoption of FinTech solutions was due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In emerging and developing markets such as India, FinTech has helped expand access to affordable financial services to the common masses in times of lockdown and social distancing (RBI, 2021).

FinTech is prompting drastic changes in the way financial transactions - especially payments and advisory services - are perceived, marketed and consumed (Mention, 2021). The most significant result of FinTech is that it has shifted the focus on customer's convenience and needs with anytime, anywhere banking, breaking down the time and distance barriers that traditional banking imposes. Consumers are also finding it easier to browse around and switch service providers in search of more product options, greater features, lower prices, or discounts. Customers, on the other hand, are perplexed because the market is swamped with services and products from a variety of providers. Additionally, unlike traditional banking techniques, FinTech is perceived as sophisticated and thus difficult to use by older cohorts who are not tech-savvy. As a result, it has become incredibly challenging for FinTech firms to manage consumer demands, establish or retain a customer base, and hence obtain a competitive advantage.

Can gaining a certain level of customer advocacy help FinTech firms beat the competition in this emerging and dynamic market? Can customers be motivated to interact positively with other customers by nurturing their self-concept, emotional states of mind and pre-dispositions? Also, can achieving a certain level of engagement with the FinTech brand ensure customers endorse the products and services and become its advocates? It has been observed over the years that a services firm can gain a competitive advantage by retaining, sustaining and nurturing its customer base (Anderson et al., 2004) by looking beyond the repurchase behaviour. Digital and social media with their richer media not only help firms to connect but also communicate information and emotions to their immediate customers and also between customers (Sashi, 2012). Hence customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions help companies promote brand advocacy by listening and learning about customers’ needs, influencing them through social media ‘thought leaders’ and also considering customer opinions (Constantinides & Fountain, 2008).

Customization, personalization efforts, and systems that engage with customers are known to affect favourable e-WOM(e-word of mouth), reviews and testimonials. To personalise, it is useful to know consumers' channel preferences, breadth of engagement, time, effort, and money spent, as well as the kind of activities they engage in. These can then predict the intensity of their referrals and product reuse (van Doorn et al., 2010). In a COVID-19 world, where all these engagement behaviours are digital, interactive, brand centred and non-transactional, it becomes essential to gauge the intrinsically driven customer motivations. Customers’ helping behaviour where they guide other customers with useful suggestions or solve a problem, or customers’ sense of community could aid them in engaging with the brand. The emotions of happiness, anger, contentment, or disgust can motivate a desirable or an undesirable customer engagement behaviour (CEB) or a referral, working as a differentiator amidst competition. Establishing emotional connections with customers can build trust and in turn assist these firms to face several challenges and intense competition in the FinTech industry.

The goal of this quantitative study is to empirically test the conceptual model on the influence of customer-based predispositions on non-transactional CEBs, and its strength in predicting the resultant advocacy behaviours in the emerging FinTech industry especially in covid pandemic times. The study sample were FinTech app customers who use Google Pay, PhonePe and so on for payment services and BankBazaar, PolicyBazaar for advisory services. The results of this study may guide marketing managers to formulate robust segmentation, positional strategies in line with the emotional, self-concept and individual needs so that they engage positively with the brand. Customer engagement and advocacy behaviours gained from these campaigns can help the companies to build and retain the competitive edge in the market.

Literature review

Service-Dominant (SD) logic in the light of relationship marketing theory attempts to know the significance of customer-to-customer (C2C) relational and referral behaviours in developing and maintaining loyalty and advocacy. The customer engagement framework in this study endorses Oliver's (1999) theory elaborating the belief-attitude-behaviour formation. In addition, social exchange theory (SET) proposes that customers display positive thoughts, feelings or behaviours towards a product or brand in reciprocation to specific benefits from the brand (Blau, 1964). CEBs arising through these processes help in spreading positive word-of-mouth (Oliver, 1999), thus advancing the underlying theories and also inspiring a future research agenda in this direction.

In a technology-intensive financial services sector, the use of new information and technologies has led to a reduction in direct physical contact with the customer. The online customer communities facilitate customers to have an open dialogue to understand and solve their problems mutually, thus effectively engaging with the brand community. This has changed the traditional roles of a buyer and a seller in such exchange relationships. Thus, customers create and share content and thus intangibly advocate the product and service value to other customers, influencing their purchase decisions. Customer advocacy is a natural side-effect of the forces that create a strong service provider-customer relationship and is a dominant pointer of repeat buying (Fullerton, 2011). An investment in the brand from an experiential approach consisting of CEBs determines customer advocacy (van Doorn et al., 2010; Moliner et al., 2018).

CEB denotes firm or brand centred behaviours that go beyond transactions but have positive or negative manifestations depending on the motivational drivers of the customer and are measured by valence (positive or negative), form/modality, scope (temporal and geographic), choice of channel and customer goals (van Doorn et al., 2010). The form/modality component depicts ways in which customers express their engagement based on time and money resources available at their disposal. The scope encompasses customers’ extra-role behaviours such as providing product-related feedback helping the company improve the product or develop new products (van Doorn et al., 2010; Kumar & Pansari, 2016). Customers' social media influence (CSMI) embodies C2C conversations over social media channels sharing their views on product benefits, thus influencing other customers of the brand community positively (Kumar & Pansari, 2016). Customers' choice of the channel such as communication via phone, in-person, in a retail setting or via the internet (email/website) can impact the CEB in terms of immediacy, intensity, length and breadth of CEB (van Doorn et al., 2010). CEBs are those non-purchase C2C behaviours where the customers influence the development of the firm's offering, brand identity through knowledge, skills, opinions, recommendations, online reviews and referrals on their own accord making it a part of experiential marketing (Jaakkola & Alexander, 2014). Studies show that customer dialogue and engagement mediates the relation between emotionally connected satisfied customers and advocacy behaviours (Moliner-Tina et al., 2019). As per Figure 1, CEB is a mediator and it is primarily motivated by customers’ pre-dispositions and which can predict customer behaviour defined by referrals and advocacy.

Figure 1. Theoretical model.

Customer predispositions are the customer-based factors, mainly the individual traits and predispositions of customers which influence the product, brand decisions and CEBs (van Doorn et al., 2010). Levy and Hino (2016) and Bhat and Darzi (2016) substantiated that emotional and relational elements influence a bank's relation with customers rather than a purely transactional approach leading to bank advocacy. It was discovered that emotional states such as anger, regret, disgust towards the company or the brand can result in CEBs and customers' accumulated emotional experiences turning into actions and behaviours (Bagozzi et al., 1999; Martin et al., 2008) and positive emotions generate positive CEBs and vice versa. Emotional connections with customers help in exhibiting the desirable CEB working as a differentiator amidst competition (Garg et al., 2005; Levy & Hino, 2016). A quantitative study observed that the emotional dimension of engagement has a positive effect on advocacy intention as well as the intention to reuse mobile payment services compared to the cognitive dimension of engagement which only influences advocacy intention (Glavee-Geo et al., 2019).

Self-concept is defined as a “desire for positive recognition by others”. Moral identity is similar to self-identity and manifests in helping behaviour. The greater the moral identity of a customer, the more is the engagement behaviour with the brand and more likely is the helping behaviour. Customers who displayed a higher value for self-concept tend to warn other customers from negative product experiences or recommend installing the right application thus exhibiting a high degree of CEBs (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004). Similarly, customers with helping behaviour tend to participate in blogging or co-promote the brand with which they are involved (Sundaram et al. 1998). Customers who are emotionally linked to brands symbolizing their self-concept are more inclined to champion the brand and disseminate favourable information about the product. They are thus less likely to be lured by competitors, are less difficult to persuade to stay, and are more eager to recommend the product (Grisaffe & Nguyen, 2011; Jayasimha & Billore, 2016).

Communal focus is the behaviour where the people belonging to a particular community are likely to voice their support for their community during difficult times (He et al., 2008). It was revealed that a strong agentic focus is likely to be displayed by the female gender while they voice their negative WOM or advocacy. The motivations for involving in positive e-WOM may vary from the impulses which drive a negative e-WOM as evident in communal focus (van Doorn et al., 2010).

Perceived cost and benefits are the perception by the customer related to the time, effort and money involved in buying and recommending the brand or product vis-à-vis the returns sought. Based on the perceived benefits and cost of engagement, the customer may engage in specific behaviours such as blogging or participation in online discussion forums or making donations to brand-related charity which has been defined as the form and modality of engagement (van Doorn et al., 2010).

Methods

Results

Out of the 420 responses, it was found that 25 responses had incomplete responses and 15 other responses had a straight-lining pattern, hence 40 responses were discarded and 380 responses remained to be analysed (Nayak Kini & Basri, 2021a). Almost 46% of respondents were found to use Google Pay, 17% each were found to use Phonepe and PayTM followed by Yono (SBI), Imobile (ICICI), BHIM and the others (fig 2). Almost 55% were males and 45% females and half of this sample population were in the age group of 25-40 years (millennials) earning anywhere between $1-$13,468 per year (1 US$ = Rs 74.25, 03 August 2021). On examining the sample, it is observed that 38% of the population is from urban, 46% from semi-urban (46%) areas, about 11% from metros and only about 3% from rural areas. The educational background of more than half of the sample (57%) was found to be postgraduates (Table 1).

Discussion

In the FinTech industry, the extensive usage of innovative technology has drastically reduced the direct face-to-face customer communications requiring experiential elements to be cherished. Our study result empirically suggests that CEBs displayed by e-WOM (e-word of mouth) behaviour are predominantly experiential and result in non-transactional outcomes such as advocacy. Study results show self-concept has a direct effect on CEB supporting the Levy and Hino (2016) study which encourages social media conversations based on a sense of brand belongingness. Self-concept also shows an indirect effect on advocacy that is fully mediated by CEB. This means that customers with a positive self-concept associated with the product tend to advocate the product only if they are engaged positively. Thus, managers need to focus on identifying and nurturing the self-concept of their customers where customers identify themselves with the brand, for them to engage. This can be achieved by having individual 'thought leaders' whose opinions on products are followed by the customers to make buying or usage decisions. Customers' product benefit perceptions can engage customers positively but cost perceptions of the FinTech transaction do not inspire them to propagate any e-WOM to their brand community.

The study results show that the emotional dimension of engagement has a direct positive effect on both engagement and advocacy (e-WOM). If emotions are positive, customers tend to experience a positive CEB or recommend the product to other customers in their social media community thus being favourable to the company, validating the previous studies by Garg (2005) and Levy and Hino (2016). If emotions are negative customers end up with negatively valenced CEB making customers less likely to recommend products. This also confirms previous studies on negative emotions linked to disengagement (van Doorn et al., 2010). Study results suggest customers' propensity to help others does not result in e-WOM or a referral campaign refuting previous studies by Sundaram (1998) and van Doorn et al. (2010).

Our study propositions companies to design and build the products and applications to address customer needs. Companies now need to invest in creating unique engaging experiences accommodating customers' perceptions on product benefits, their inherent communal focus, self-concept and emotional needs in mind for them to engage and promote the brand to others turning them into advocates. FinTech firms need to primarily have platforms and social media channels that nurtures C2C interactions, reviews, and testimonials favourable for the FinTech brands and companies. The companies can inspire improved perceptions on product benefits by implementing necessary mechanisms that make the transactions safer, faster, smoother, and more convenient. In addition, FinTech companies should incorporate innovative features, deals and offers customised to the past app user behaviour and the market needs. Moreover, it becomes essential not to hurt the communal feelings of the product community giving way to any unfavourable CEB such as a negative WOM. This implies that brands need to be focused and sensitive to the needs of community groups, which otherwise can turn into a negative engagement affecting a larger customer base.

This empirical study authenticates the role of CEB as a mediator fully mediating the relationship path self-concept -> customer advocacy and partially mediating the relationship paths perceived benefits -> customer advocacy and communal focus -> customer advocacy. Correspondingly, it assists practitioners to devise suitable and personalised segmentation or promotional strategies for various marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

It is observed that the emerging financial services companies are continuing to digitise and technologically disrupt. Especially, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the adoption of technology-enabled contactless financial services rises, it becomes vital to meet the increasing customer expectations by assisting them in making correct choices and accomplishing customer goals. Apart from that, firms need to individualise, engage, and personalise the offerings to stand out in the ever-growing competition. The study results indicate that a highly pre-dispositional customer possessing a high self-concept reciprocate positive e-WOM only when they are engaged with the financial application created through online influencer strategies. The positive CEBs get formed through self-concept, communal focus, emotions and perceived benefits related to the product helping to build advocacy behaviours. Results also indicate that emotions alone can directly influence advocacy for the FinTech industry. Thus, the emerging and competitive FinTech industry survives only if the emotionally connected customers, whose self-concept, communal focus and perceptions on product benefits are aligned with that of the companies demonstrating long-term brand engagement advocacy behaviours.

Data availability