Target your customer's contextually : Explaining contextual targeting’s effect within the banking market

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of this explanatory study was to explain how contextual targeting affects customer attitudes, privacy concerns, trust, and loyalty.  Literature Review: The reviewed literature included concepts that are important within the banking market. Such as attitude (cognitive, affective, and conative), privacy concerns, trust, and loyalty. Based on the literature review the authors proposed six hypotheses that together formed the research model.  Methodology: A positivistic and deductive research approach was adopted in the form of a quantitative research design. Primary data was collected through an online questionnaire created in Google Forms which generated a total of 132 responses. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha, and Pearson's correlation stood as a basis to analyze and interpret the data. Lastly, regression analysis was conducted in order to address the authors' proposed hypotheses stemming from the literature review.  Findings: The study found that contextual targeting had a significant positive effect on the three components of attitudes, cognitive, affective, and conative. Contextual targeting did not have a significant positive effect on privacy concerns, rather a negative effect in this study. Trust and loyalty were significantly positively affected by contextual targeting. The findings implied that contextual targeting positively affected visibility, awareness, preferences among customers of banks as well as their final purchase decision. Also, that contextual targeting affected trust and loyalty towards banks positively implying the positive aspects of utilizing the marketing strategy.  Keywords - Contextual targeting, Attitudes, Cognitive, Affective, Conative, Privacy concerns, Trust, Loyalty