Customer Engagement (“Vinculation”) as a Driver of Value Creation in Commercial Banking: Bridging the Internal Potential Market Gap-Evidence and a Structural Model for the Moroccan Banking Sector

This paper reconceptualises value creation in commercial banking around the notion of customer engagement — termed vinculation in continental relationship-banking practice — and tests it within a formal statistical framework. Departing from the acquisition-centric view that equates growth with client-share gains, we argue that the primary reservoir of value is the Internal Potential Market (IPM): the additional business mobilisable by raising existing clients to the market’s average relationship intensity. We formalise the penetration–participation–vinculation triad, derive the IPM and its closure rate as measurable constructs, and specify a partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) in which product equipment, digital adoption and relationship tenure drive vinculation, which in turn drives per-client profitability and IPM-gap closure. We complement the structural model with a dynamic panel specification (system-GMM) to address endogeneity and reverse causality, and with quantile and robust regressions to assess the stability of the vinculation–profitability link across the client distribution. Using an illustrative calibration consistent with Moroccan retail-banking structures, the framework predicts that a ten-point increase in the vinculation index closes a substantial share of the IPM gap and lifts per-client profitability more than an equivalent increase in penetration. The study contributes a rigorous, replicable measurement apparatus for relationship intensity and offers managerially actionable levers for value creation in emerging-market banking.