Baby Boomers' intention to use branch or digital banking channels in South Africa: An exploratory study.

With Baby Boomers comprising a significant and profitable segment of the South African population, understanding the banking behaviour of seniors becomes an important task for banking institutions. With minimal literature dedicated to the banking behaviour of seniors, this study aimed to outline aspects which influenced Boomer's intention to use branch or digital channels and identify reasons for this. Literature highlighted the significant role of behavioural beliefs, trust, normative beliefs, perceived usefulness, perceived secureness and perceived control in banking intention, with gender, computer literacy, banking institution and banking channel used, being the major differences when choosing to walk into a branch or bank electronically. By applying the Kruskal-Wallis test on data collected from 281 Boomers across Gauteng, it was found that the gender of Boomers did not have any differences across branch and digital channels. By applying banking channel split, differences were found among the branch, digital and both channel groups for all six variables for both branch and DB intention. Reasons for these differences were also outlined within. Based on these findings, recommendations for the banking institutions of SA have been provided. Suggestions on future research initiatives are included, with linking banking intention to banking behaviour and conducting comparisons to other generational groups being notable topics.