The paper is aimed at modelling the e‐competence of internet bank customers with a new text‐analytic method.
A web survey using a critical incident technique approach (CIT) and follow‐up interviews was used to sequentially capture verbal accounts of the very first experience of users of a particular internet bank. Text analyses were carried out from the complete set of responses to the trigger questions to synthesise user accounts of these experiences.
These verbal syntheses (as modelled by a Pertex text‐analytic approach) are purported to illustrate e‐competence. A diverging pattern of e‐competency was found. One group of customers was able to handle the web site and the other group felt abandoned and was not able to adopt technology.
The study comprised a limited sample of Danish first‐time internet bank customers. Therefore, generalisations should not be drawn as to the competencies of bank customers. Further research could encompass much larger and broader samples and be focused on a particular internet function or e‐service.
Findings suggest that some customer groups may have difficulties in applying new technology and that these groups may have special needs of support in the start‐up period.
The value of the paper is that it illustrates a new kind of text analysis that can summarise divergent texts and thereby distinguish between different kinds of user competence in a meaningful way.
