The financial crisis has
greatly influenced consumers’ financial and economic behavior.
For instance, in Denmark (the national economy in
which this research is based), the financial crisis has led to
a decrease in consumers’ confidence in their future economic
ability (Rangvid, 2013) and an increase in consumers’ savings
at the expense of consumption, which in turn has negatively
affected gross domestic product (Nordea, 2013).
Although such notions are manifold in the literature, no
research known to us has yet compared the role of trust in
customer–seller relationships before and after the financial
crisis. For instance, although financial customers may have
lost confidence in financial service providers after the crisis,
we do not know whether this has resulted in financial customers
relying more or less on trust when determining
whether to remain loyal to a financial service provider. This
is an unfortunate shortcoming.