he First Bank Of Nigeria plc was established in 1894,known as Standard bank , then Union Bank of Nigeria Plc also known as Barclays bank, WEMA bank also started as Agbomagbe, so many banks came afterwards. Banking was done manually before the use of computer.

Up till 1980`s, banks were practising what you can call ARMCHAIR BANKING, because then bankers do not do marketing, they do not bother about treating customers right or acting fast, rather they use tally numbers etc, and the time spent by customers in the bank was much, but by 1990 banks started using computer fully which further strengthened the banks by reducing the average waiting time of customer, thereby drawing more customer to the banks. Increase in branch Introduction of great banking software that enabled the banks official serve their customers better. Almost all banks are now fashioning out good products that are Customer Friendly.

The study sought the investigation of major factors that attracts customers to a particular bank, which of the factors is the most considered, and also what banks should include or remove in their array of products/services. Clarkson et al. (1990) study suggests that the characteristics and financial service requirements of consumers vary with age, and that these differences could be used in developing marketing strategies for such services. A paper of Boyd et al. (1994) reveals that reputation, interest charged on loans, and interest on savings accounts are viewed as having more importance than other criteria such as friendliness of employees, modern facilities, and drive-in-service. Stafford (1996) stated that demographics continue to be one of the most popular and well-accepted bases for segmenting markets and customers. Even if others types of segmentation variables are used a marketer must know and understand demographics to assess the size, reach and efficiency of the market. The general conclusion of this study is that there is a significant relationship between demographics characteristics and the service quality perception.

Banking services are characteristically different from physical products and as such the focus of differentiating customers based on these should be multi-faceted, various studies Zeithamal and Bitner ,(1996); Lovelock (1996); Legg and Baker, (1996) found banking services being closely related to intangible like Trust, Commitment, Transparency, Inseprability, Heterogeniety. Effective positioning reflects how customers perceive the products, factors that make the customer satisfied and whether customers behave differently with different factors while choosing a bank.

Customer Satisfaction has a close relationship to customer retention, in this regards, studies on customer segmentation and bank selection criteria along with customer satisfaction were done Snow et al (1996) and Furrer et al (2000). Their studies conclude that there were clear differences in the services expectation for retail banking. Keeton (2001) found that some customers willingly pay high service charge since they are receiving e-banking services at the next footstep, however some people still believe in personalised attention instead of technological investment which may be bring along increase in cost. Authors such as Luce and Tukey (1964) and Krantz, et al (1991) explored the behavioural axioms that would enable a decomposition of an overall judgment using Conjoint Analysis. In a seminal paper (Green and Rao (1971)), they drew upon this conjoint measurement theory, adapted it to the solution of marketing and product-development problems, considered carefully the practical measurement issues, and opened a floodgate of research opportunities and applications.

Conjoint Analysis is a tool that allows a subset of the possible combination of product features to be used to determine the relative importance of each feature in purchasing decision, it is based on the fact that the relative values of attributes considered jointly can be better measured than when considered in isolation. It is a technique for measuring consumer preference for products or services, taking attributes of the products/services into consideration. The remaining parts of the paper are as follows: Section 2 presents the methodology. Section 3 involves the analysis of data and results. Simulation results are presented in section 4 and finally, section 5 concludes the study.

In this work, six factors that determine the choice of a bank were considered at different levels. These are location, customer relations, innovations, interest rate, security and product type. The levels for each of the factors are as given below: The questionnaire was constructed with the help of some friends and colleagues who are well versed in banking, the factors and levels were derived by the use of an interview sessions with some top bankers, some bank customers and some that does not have any account at all. A set of profile cards were distributed alongside the questionnaire to allow customers choose the their preference of some combination of factors at different levels combined at random, this was generated with the use of computer (SPSS) and all the 25 profile cards were orthogonal., as against the whole (3*3*3*3*4*2=648) possible profile cards. The respondents were charged with the responsibility of ranking all the 25 profile cards with the least number 1, going to the most preferred profile, up to 25 which goes to the least preferred profile card.

The questionnaires were administered randomly at both the mainland and Lagos Island branches of all banks. Only 200 questionnaires were completely and correctly filled, along side with the ranking of profile cards. The method of analysis was Full profile Conjoint Analysis, with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS17).

From the utilities part-worth's given below, it is evident that out of the location levels the most preferred was the proximity because it has a higher utility value ( 1.167), next to it is nationwide spread of the bank branches (0.068) , and the least considered was localised coverage of the branches (-1.235). A higher utility value connotes a higher preference. For the Customer relations levels, the most considered level was for the staff of the bank to be very efficient as well as being friendly with utility part worth 2.284, followed by customers being attended to promptly even if the staff frowns with utility part worth -0.271 , the least considered level was for any complain from customers to be handled rightly and on time, with utility part worth -2.067. For Innovation desirability level, Availability of the Automated Teller Machine (ATM), was the most preferred, with utility part worth 1.150 followed by the access to internet banking services, with utility part worth 0.080, the least preferred was birthday and festive wishes to customers on phone, with utility part worth -1.230. For the pricing/interest rates, customers chose the high interest rate on fixed deposit with utility part worth 0.564, to be more useful than that of loan /credit facility -0.135 with a lower rate, the least considered was the bank charge on all other service(s) rendered, with utility part worth -0.435. Again, for desirability within the product type levels, the most preferred was the savings plus with utility 0.865, followed by target savings, with utility part worth -0.209 next was salary advance, -0.244 and the least considered was other types with utility part worth -0.412. Lastly, for Security, obviously, most bank customers went for a more secured bank, with utility -10.319, rather than a fairly secured with utility -20.619, though all the banks have an average level of security because of the existence of Nigerian Deposit and Insurance Corporation, which is a body that ensures that a certain amount of money is paid back to depositors in case of distress. The relative importance of each factor was derived with the use of SPSS Conjoint analysis. It was observed that Security of funds was the most important factor, followed by customer relations, then product type, closely followed by location of the bank branch(es), the fifth factor preferred was innovation of the bank and the least preferred factor was the interest rates.

IV.

The real significance of conjoint analysis is its ability to predict preference for profiles (hypothetical products) for profile cards that were not included in the main ranking, that is, it was not part of the first 25 profile cards. The numbering of the simulation products was differentiated by the use of numbers that were not serial to the main 25 profile cards. The maximum utility model was used to determine the probability of the number of respondents who are predicted to choose the profile divided by the total number of respondents. Bradley-Terry-Luce model is calculated as the ratio of a profile's utility to that of all simulated profiles, and then averaged across all respondents. The Logit model is very close to Bradley-Terry-Luce model, but it uses the natural logarithm of the utilities in place of the utility values.

V.

The competition for deposits in Nigerian banks is very keen. All Nigerian banks have deployed an array of tools to position themselves for this battle for deposits, but before deposits can come, customers have to open account or at least maintain the account. Banks are expected to study customer's preference on factors that can attract them to their bank, in order to Figure 1: The Importance Summary Conjoint analysis gave us an insight into customers' preference on factors that attract them to banks. Security of funds was the most important factor, followed by customer relations; both product type and location were also given a high consideration by customers. On the relative importance of all factors, security was placed to be the most important, interest rates was rated as the least, but this does not mean that