CUSTOMER RESEARCH OF NON-BANK ENTITIES

Abstract

The issue of nonbank entities in the Slovak Republic and segmentation of their customers is extremely topical and important. Its topicality and importance is emphasized by increasing number of nonbank entities on financial market established by either legal or physical persons. Almost thirty thousand distraint cases annually when incomes and property of nonbank customers are seized for failure to repay raises attention on this topic, too. The legal environment in the Slovak Republic enables to establish nonbank entities. They are performed under Commercial Code and other laws regulating nonbank activities when acting as creditors providing consumer credits and loans to its customers. Therefore, the nonbank entities with their products and services are generating competitive landscape for bank sector. Customers are basic precondition for financial institution performance. All methods and forms of goalـdirected marketing are used to address customer. To gain success the nonbank entities are forced to search for those groups of customers which will be interested in their products and services. They use a number of modern methods and research techniques for this purpose.  The author points in the paper at the importance of segmentation of non-bank entities customers in the Slovak Republic. Theoretical starting points are followed by brief description of the evolution of non-bank entities in the Slovak Republic as well as by description of their legal framework. There are selected results of author’s research on segmentation of non-bank entities customers in the Slovak Republic presented in the paper’s core. Based on these results the author evaluates present situation of segmentation taking into consideration segmentation criteria, she identifies problem areas and suggests solutions for improvements.