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This project aims to offer an in‐depth understanding of bank customers' buying behaviour in relation to the selection process, and provide bank managers with useful insight into the development of high quality relationships with customers.

The research involved a review of available literature on bank choice criteria, the fieldwork, the identification of factors that affect customers' choice, and the development of related managerial implications. A research questionnaire was administered by personal interviews to 1,092 bank customers in the greater area of Athens.

Four distinct factors were identified as the main choice criteria that influence consumers' bank choice. Bank service quality is the most important element that customers consider in order to select their mortgage providers and establish a long‐term relationship with them. The other three refer to product attributes, access, and communication.

Limitations relate to the use of non‐probability sample and the restricted geographical area of the field research. This study contributes to the body of academic knowledge by shedding more light into the role of service quality in the selection process of mortgage provider.

An understanding of consumer buying behaviour with respect to mortgage loans is important to bank managers for the attainment of organisational objectives that are focused on building beneficial customer relationships. Management guidelines for improving service quality are presented.

The paper manages to identify the perceived important characteristics of banks and particularly highlight the role of service quality in bank selection for mortgages and further development of long‐term relationships.

Corn ethanol plants consume large amounts of corn and their location has the potential to alter local crop prices and surrounding agricultural land values. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the local economic impact of ethanol plant locations on farmland values.

The relationship between ethanol plant location and agricultural land prices is examined using data obtained from the Agricultural Credit Survey administered by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

The findings indicate that ethanol plant location has had an impact on land values. The portion of land price changes attributable to location is consistent with previous estimates of basis changes associated with ethanol plant location.

The paper finds that land markets appear to be rationally adjusting to the location of ethanol plants.

If meaningful market plans are to be made and strategies developed to implement them, international banks mut have a comprehensive knowledge of customers' attitudes, perceptions of the various services they offer, and the image which customers have of them. Following preliminary data gathering, sampling and a pilot study, data were gathered by means of personal interviews with a sample of 240 Royal Bank of Canada customers and 24 branch managers and/or employees during November 1982 in the town of Halifax. The research supports the hypothesis that the Royal Bank's overall advertising policy in Halifax properly reflects the attributes which are important to the community's bank market. It also supports the hypothesis that the corporate identity of the bank is consistent with the community's image of the bank. The hypothesis that the bank's perception of the ideal bank is the same as that of the market is not accepted.

The Islamic banking system is not very primordial, but recently it is getting popular. Now it becomes a prominent topic to investigate what are the reasons behind it and how it happens. This study aims to identify the influencing factors in the time of opening account in Islamic banks.

A descriptive and factor analysis method were carried out to collect the quantitative data using a validated structured questionnaire. This study is based on a survey of 300 clients from Bangladesh who have at least one bank account in any Islamic banks in Bangladesh.

The findings of the study revealed that the most important factors influencing the people to open an account in Islamic banks including high Riba (Interest) on saving, ATM facility, confirmation SMS on the transaction, availability of branch service in several locations, lower cost on financing (loan), low initial deposit fee for account opening, employees’ prompt service and their behavior, etc. Also, the other religious people, rather than Islam, start a banking relationship with Islamic banks without any obligation.

The study focused only on a certain area of Bangladesh. This study could be extended for a different target market, creative strategy, other media and more countries.

The paper provides guidelines to the management of Islamic banks to decide to attract more customers by focusing on the influencing factors that manipulate a person to open a bank account.

The research is original. There are very few studies available on this topic, particularly focusing on Bangladesh. Consequently, the research findings have significant implications for Islamic banks functioning in a predominantly Islamic atmosphere.

Describes a study designed to investigate the banking behavior of Islamic bank customers in the state of Bahrain. The study sample comprised 300 customers. A comprehensive profile analysis and a series of chi‐square tests were conducted to reveal key characteristics and patterns: the majority of Islamic bank customers are well educated; approximately 80 per cent are between 25‐50 years of age; more than 50 per cent of the surveyed customers have maintained their current banking relationship with Islamic banks for more than six years; customers’ awareness and usage rates are quite high for savings accounts, current accounts, investment accounts and automated teller machines; customers were found to be most satisfied with the products/services they use most, with the investment accounts receiving the highest satisfaction score; Islamic bank employees received the highest satisfaction score among the elements of the service delivery system; the two most important bank selection criteria were adherence to the Islamic principles, followed by the rate of return.

There has been an increase in the number of multinational banks (MNBs) in India and Nigeria. While the literature is replete with analysis of multinational banking in developed countries, not much is known about the drivers of multinational banking in developing countries. This chapter uses the linear probability estimation technique and a sample of 57 Indian and Nigerian banks to investigate firm-level determinants of bank internationalization, as well as inter-bank variations in the number of foreign branches/subsidiaries. The empirical results suggest that the decision by banks from India and Nigeria to internationalize is influenced by firm-level characteristics such as after-tax profit, capital adequacy ratio (CAR), total assets (TA or bank size), volume of customer deposits (CD) and the number of domestic branches. A bank’s decision to establish a given number of foreign branches and subsidiaries depends on variables such as CAR, CD and TA. Based on the empirical results, the chapter proposes some hypotheses about bank internationalization in developing countries.

This study aimed to explore the importance of various factors considered in the bank selection decisions of micro- and small-sized enterprises (MSEs) in Ethiopia.

The study used a structured questionnaire to collect data from 300 MSEs selected through a convenience sampling technique. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and linear regression analysis methods are used to identify the most important factors determining bank selection by MSEs.

The results of exploratory factor analysis revealed that the availability of credit at a reasonable interest rate, lower service charges and the availability of better automated teller machine (ATM) services are the priorities of MSEs in their bank selection decisions. In addition, the results of regression analysis indicated that price competitiveness is the most important factor determining bank selection decisions of MSEs.

This study has two major limitations: first, due to resource constraints, the samples included in this study were taken only from the capital city of the country, Addis Ababa. As customer preferences are likely to vary from region to region, future studies could be carried out by including samples from other cities and rural areas of the country. Second, the study relied on a single data collection instrument. The use of additional data collection instruments, such as interviews and focus group discussions, could provide additional insights into the topic.

Commercial banks need to devise a flexible lending policy and set affordable interest rates and collateral requirements to meet the credit needs of MSEs. MSEs, on the other hand, need to improve their bankability by improving their operating and financial reporting practices. Further research can be conducted by covering other cities and the rural parts of the country.

The topic of bank selection has not been explored with a specific reference to MSEs in Ethiopia. The present study addressed this gap by investigating the factors influencing bank selection decisions of MSEs.

The purpose of this paper is to identify which small businesses are most “debt sensitive”, or most likely to be affected by banking market conditions.

For the primary debt sensitivity categories, the paper hypothesizes that bank conditions are most likely to have significant effects on firms in size classes and industries that are “on the bubble” for credit availability (probability of credit close to 0.50), rather than those with “relatively easy” or “relatively difficult” access to credit (probability much higher or lower, respectively). The secondary classifications also require that loans fund a substantial proportion of assets for the firms in the category that have loans. These hypotheses are tested using a comprehensive data set of US small businesses by size class and industry matched with variables measuring bank market power, market structure, and efficiency in the firm's local markets.

Findings show that the data are consistent with the hypotheses, with the strongest support for the hypotheses occurring using the secondary classifications. In terms of policy implications, the findings suggest that the credit availability of small, debt‐sensitive firms may be reduced by within‐market mergers that increase concentration in rural markets, but that the more common type of recent consolidation – creating larger banks that operate in more markets – may be associated with an increase in credit availability for these sensitive firms. Such an increase in credit availability would be magnified if consolidation resulted in increased bank operating efficiency.

The paper offers insights into the effect of banks on “debt‐sensitive” small businesses.

Distribution systems planning frequently involves two major decisions: facility location and vehicle routing. The facilities to be located may be “primary facilities”, e.g. factories, but more often, these are lighter “secondary facilities” such as depots, warehouses or distribution centres. Routing decisions concern the optimal movement of goods and vehicles in the system, usually from primary to secondary facilities, and from secondary facilities to users or customers. Studies which integrate the two areas are more often than not limited to the case where all deliveries are return trips involving only one destination. There exist, however, several situations where vehicles visit more than one point on the same trip. In such cases, relationships between location and routing decisions become more intricate. Strategies by which the two aspects of the problem are optimised separately and sequentially are often sub‐optimal. Also of importance is the trade‐off between the cost of providing service and customer inconvenience. A framework is proposed for the study of such combined location‐routing problems. A number of real‐life cases described in the literature are summarised and some algorithmic issues related to such problems are discussed.