What drives the choice of business bank accounts among Brazilian entrepreneurs: a qualitative study of decision journeys, profiles and determinant attributes

This thesis investigates why Brazilian micro, small, and medium business owners choose and stay with a corporate bank account in a market where digital alternatives are widely available. Through 27 semi-structured interviews, the study combines Switching Cost Theory and UTAUT2 to understand what drives and sustains these decisions. Findings show that the process is non-linear and shaped by two dimensions, business size and digital orientation, which together produce four distinct entrepreneur quadrants with different decision journeys. For a significant part of the sample, the primary barrier is not which bank to choose but whether to open a business account at all. This extends Switching Cost Theory into a previous stage not explored in the literature about the fact that costs operate before any banking relationship exists, blocking the decision to formalize rather than the decision to switch. Among those who do engage with the choice, decisions are driven more by brand familiarity and trust in established institutions than by product comparison, with physical branch presence acting as a condition of trust that filters out digital-only providers before evaluation begins. Switching costs operate earlier than existing literature suggests, shaping not just provider retention but the decision to formalize in the first place. The study contributes a revised conceptual framework that maps these different paths and extends the application of Switching Cost Theory and UTAUT2 to a pre-adoption stage not previously explored in the context of MSMB banking. Practically, the findings suggest that reaching entrepreneurs who have never seriously evaluated alternatives requires building relational credibility over time, something that cannot be addressed through product features or onboarding flows alone.