FACTORS AFFECTING MOBILE BANKING ADOPTION BEHAVIOR IN NORTH EASTERN STATES OF INDIA

Mobile phone is playing a major role to connect with the banking services for undergoing financial transactions in less time and expenses. But the challenge lies in the mindset of the customers who had been undergoing with a traditional mindset to avail the banking services in terms of their physical presence in the bank. Even though the rate of availing financial services through various banking channels is huge in number but in case of online banking especially when it comes to mobile; is quite negligible in percentage which is less than 3 percent in case of North East India (SBI, 2016). The adoption of mobile banking services might synergize the way people do banking today. It will not only save the time and cost of the users; rather it would suffice by providing some additional benefits like sms alert, various scheme related informations, booking of tickets, purchasing of goods and many more. However, if the banking customers do not realize the utility of such service; then it is very much essential to understand their viewpoint regarding this process of service delivery and to deeply analyze the psyche behind such behavior; mostly to help the banking organizations to reap the benefit of investment on mobile banking services. It has been found that in case of metropolitan cities the rate of adoption of mobile banking is higher as compare to tier 2 and tier 3 cities. In the present research tier 2 and tier 3 cities like Shillong (Capital of Meghalaya), Agartala (Capital of Tripura) and Silchar (Prominent business city in the state of Assam) which are belonging to the North Eastern part of India have been considered. Hence an attempt has been taken to find and analyze the factors responsible for the usage of mobile banking and also to understand if there is any difference in the behavior towards mobile banking usage in terms of various demographic profiles of the users.