Technology innovation management in the Nigerian banking industry: integrating stakeholders’ perspectives, an exploration of strategy and policy implications.

摘要

Technology innovation is one of the defining attributes of the 21st century. The banking sector amongst other key sectors has embraced the use of new technologies to offer electronic banking (e-banking) services. E-banking has been introduced in various economies of the world as a way of delivering effective and efficient banking services. Despite the several benefits of e-banking technologies, many individual bank customers in Nigeria have not adopted most of the available channels. ATM has remained the most patronized compared to other channels such as the point of sales (POS), online banking and the mobile banking. Promotional offers and various publicity for these platforms by commercial banks as well as the introduction of the cash policy which made the use of these platforms mandatory have not yielded substantial outcome.Therefore, the researcher set out to carry out two interrelated studies in a bid to explore the levels of e-banking adoption by individual bank customers in Nigeria. Firstly, a comparative analysis of the starting conditions of e-banking in Nigeria and the UK was carried out using secondary sources of data. The second part of the study examined the significance of an extended model of Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DIT) on e-banking adoption in Nigeria. This extended model entails the addition of "cost variables" to the mix of Rogers’s five attributes of innovation diffusion (i.e. Relative Advantage, Complexity, Compatibility, Trialability and Observability). Cost variables according to this study are the three types of switching costs, the available complementary assets and the usefulness of available services. Based on this DIT extended model, adoption levels of five e-banking platforms: ATM; POS; Online banking; Mobile banking and telephone banking services were investigated. Data for this study were obtained from both the service providers (the commercial banks) and the service users (individual customers). NVivo 10 was used to analyse the qualitative data while ordinal regression modelling was utilised to analyse the quantitative data obtained.According to the findings of this research, the security of the platforms, need for a strategic enlightenment campaign as well as infrastructural development (i.e. internet and electricity) are the three key factors that are fundamental to increase adoption of e-banking platforms in Nigeria. Findings also reveal the peculiarity of each of the e-banking platforms as different variables significantly predict uptake of individual platforms while Compatibility, Observability, Gender and Education emerged as significant predictors of ATM. Compatibility, Trialability Procedural Switching Cost and Gender predict POS patronage. For online banking, Compatibility, Procedural Switching Cost, Gender and Education emerged as significant predictors of this platform while Financial Switching Cost, Relational Switching Cost, Age and Education significantly predict the use of mobile banking. Telephone banking is not currently available to individual bank customers in Nigeria and as such further discussions on the quantitative output were discontinued.Following the expert witness feedback of these key findings, the researcher concludes that it is imperative to critically assess the availability of the enabling mechanisms/structure before introducing an innovation such as e-banking. The importance of this assessment is to evaluate and carefully direct the approach to that which fits such innovation. Underestimating or ignoring the impact of these fundamental structures usually have a negative impact on adoption as evident in the findings of this research which pointed that the current level of infrastructure of the country does not support the uptake of this innovation. This study also concludes that, the security of the platforms, the development of e-banking enlightenment campaign and infrastructural inadequacies should be addressed. Furthermore, attempts to unify or adopt a singular approach to increase e-banking patronage will not yield a significant result because each platform is unique. Thus, subsequent governmental policies and the CBN dictates on e-banking adoption should be formulated or modified based on the consideration of the enabling mechanism. Banks should adopt specific strategies towards increasing the patronage each platform.