Managing hybrid marketing systems

As competition increases and costs become critical, companies that once went to market only one way are adding new channels and using new methods - creating hybrid marketing systems. These hybrid marketing systems hold the promise of greater coverage and reduced costs. But they are also hard to manage; they inevitably raise questions of conflict and control: conflict because marketing units compete for customers; control because new indirect channels are less subject to management authority. Hard as they are to manage, however, hybrid marketing systems promise to become the dominant design, replacing the "purebred" channel strategy in all kinds of businesses. The trick to managing the hybrid is to analyze tasks and channels within and across a marketing system. A map - the hybrid grid - can help managers make sense of their hybrid system. What the chart reveals is that channels are not the basic building blocks of a marketing system; marketing tasks are. The hybrid grid forces managers to consider various combinations of channels and tasks that will optimize both cost and coverage. Managing conflict is also an important element of a successful hybrid system. Managers should first acknowledge the inevitability of conflict. Then they should move to bound it by creating guidelines that spell out which customers to serve through which methods. Finally, a marketing and sales productivity (MSP) system, consisting of a central marketing database, can act as the central nervous system of a hybrid marketing system, helping managers create customized channels and service for specific customer segments.     

Measuring risk in the mining sector with ARCH models with important observations on sample size

This paper uses the GARCH technique to estimate time-varying individual firm risk measures for the mining sector. In general, the mining industry is riskier than the market with estimated betas greater than one. The results also show that the level of risk in the industry is quite volatile and can be divided into three distinct time periods according to the magnitude and variability of the firm's betas. Additionally, the number of observations in a sample has a strong relationship to the detection and estimation of an ARCH effect in the data, which cannot be explained by firm financial size.     

Public sector borrowing requirement: A plain man's guide

With the implementation of an internal market in the UK National Health Service (NHS), interest in marketing NHS services is growing. Yet marketing practice in other sectors of the economy, and the experience of other markets in health care, raise doubts and objections as to whether marketing should be introduced in the NHS at all. Some of these objections have force, and there are important structural differences between the NHS internal market and conventional markets. Simply copying conventional marketing methods is therefore unlikely to be an effective, or even a desirable, approach to marketing in the NHS. Specific forms of marketing are required for the NHS and these forms differ for purchasing organizations, for commercialized health care providers (including NHS trusts), and for directly‐managed NHS services. Differences between these variants can be illustrated by considering the different ways in which a generic model of marketing would have to be amended for each case. The differences also suggest some policy and managerial parameters for the future development of NHS marketing.     

运用数据仓库创新工商银行营销模式和管理方法研究

数据仓库起源于对巨量数据进行处理的需要,是随着信息技术的发展和业务应用需求的增大而产生的。中国工商银行作为国际性的大型商业银行,从2001年开始,就着手进行数据仓库系统建设。随着金融同业竞争的日趋激烈和国有商业银行股份制改造步伐的加快,大力运用数据仓库系统创新营销模式和管理方法已显得非常紧迫和十分必要。本课题着眼于国际国内金融市场,瞄准数据仓库技术前沿,根据工商银行的业务经营实际,较为深入地阐述了工商银行营销模式、管理方法与数据仓库的演变历程和将来的发展方向,并且有针对性地提出了当前对其融合创新的具体思路。     

The research vendor selection process: A quantitative decision matrix for increasing value for both buyers and sellers

This paper provides a real life example of the importance of the research vendor selection process within an organisation that is transforming its focus towards a customer-centric approach through an increased understanding of customers and consumers and the use of research for segmentation. The authors have developed a ‘Vendor Selection Matrix’ which quantitatively weighs and measures potential vendors against key criteria for successful research and segmentation. This matrix was used on a consulting project with a Canadian-based financial services organisation. Valuable insights and ideas for marketing executives, managers and professionals, the market research community and marketers of financial services products are provided. The paper finishes with the key lessons learnt throughout the market research vendor selection process, industry applicability and implications for further research.     

Selling the brand inside

When you think of marketing, chances are your mind goes right to your customers--how can you persuade more people to buy whatever it is you sell? But there's another "market" that's equally important: your employees. Author Colin Mitchell argues that executives by and large ignore this critical internal audience when developing and executing branding campaigns. As a result, employees end up undermining the expectations set by the company's advertising--either because they don't understand what the ads have promised or because they don't believe in the brand and feel disengaged or, worse, hostile toward the company. Mitchell offers three principles for executing internal branding campaigns--techniques executives can use to make sure employees understand, embrace, and "live" the brand vision companies are selling to the public. First, he says, companies need to market to employees at times when the company is experiencing a fundamental challenge or change, times when employees are seeking direction and are relatively receptive to new initiatives. Second, companies must link their internal and external marketing campaigns; employees should hear the same messages that are being sent to the market-place. And third, internal branding campaigns should bring the brand alive for employees, creating an emotional connection to the company that transcends any one experience. Internal campaigns should introduce and explain the brand messages in new and attention-grabbing ways and then reinforce those messages by weaving them into the fabric of the company. It is a fact of business, writes Mitchell, that if employees do not care about or understand their company's brands, they will ultimately weaken their organizations. It's up to top executives, he says, to give them a reason to care.     

Integrating Management Accounting and Marketing in the Pursuit of Competitive advantage: the case for strategic management accounting

As a powerful approach to accounting for competitive advantage, strategic management accounting remains largely unexploited. Externally focused on the market, strategic management accounting integrates insights from management accounting and marketing within a strategic management framework. Consequently it can be distinguished from seemingly related attempts to develop a more strategically significant approach to accounting to management. In addition to debating these issues, the paper draws on field study data to suggest a potentially fruitful advance of the strategic management accounting concept in the form of brand management accounting.     

Financial services and the elderly poor: Development and implementation of sustainable intervention strategies

Given the significance of the elderly consumer market in the development of successful and comprehensive marketing strategies, it is imperative that marketing decision-makers and policymakers better understand and respond to the varied needs of this significant consumer segment. The management of financial matters is important at every juncture in life, but particularly so for the elderly. This area of concern is exacerbated when considering the large number of elderly in poverty or near-poverty levels of existence. On the basis of the extant literature review, most consumer education programs focus on young consumers. As the population ages, the societal role of the mature market becomes more and more significant. A well-developed consumer financial initiative designed to assist this important market segment can generate tremendous dividends in both the short- and long-run for sponsoring institutions/business organizations. Consumer financial education programs offer considerable promise for this market sector. Given this state of affairs, the article's key objective is to offer an integrative conceptual platform to address some of major concerns in developing and implementing consumer financial education programs for the elderly poor. The conceptual model details the mechanics of constructing and executing effective financial education initiatives for the elderly poor, with the attendant marketing management implications.     

Integration vs. Segmentation in the Canadian Stock Market

This paper examines the issue of integration versus segmentation of the Canadian equity market relative to a global North American market. We compare the international and domestic versions of the CAPM, and find that integration, or the mean-variance efficiency of the global market index, is rejected by the data. Segmentation is the preferred model, based on a maximum likelihood procedure correcting for thin trading. We further divide the sample into securities that are interlisted in Canada and the U.S., and those that are not. Integration is rejected for both groups, which indicates that the source of segmentation can be traced to legal barriers based on the nationality of issuing firms.     

Nonprofits: check your attention to customers

Nonprofit organizations chronically face financial difficulties. Now the situation has worsened because they are being squeezed between the uncertain economic climate and cutbacks in government support. While the managers of these institutions may think that they have already tried everything possible, more than ever they must be innovative in developing additional funding sources. As Mr. Andreasen argues, most nonprofits have failed to exploit marketing techniques which can build support from users or customers that leads to improved cash flow. The author contends that managers of nonprofit organizations focus too closely on their products or services; he admonishes them to give more attention to the needs and wants of their consumers.     

Strategic sourcing: from periphery to the core

As globalization changes the basis of competition, sourcing is moving from the periphery of corporate functions to the core. Always important in terms of costs, sourcing is becoming a strategic opportunity. But few companies are ready for this shift. Outsourcing has grown so sophisticated that even critical functions like engineering, R&D, manufacturing, and marketing can-and often should-be moved outside. And that, in turn, is changing the way companies think about their organizations, their value chains, and their competitive positions. Already, a handful of vanguard companies are transforming what used to be purely internal corporate functions into entirely new industries. Companies like UPS, Solectron, and Hewitt have created new business models by concentrating scale and skill within a single function. As these and other function-based companies grow, so does the potential value of outsourcing to all companies. Migrating from a vertically integrated company to a specialized provider of a single function is not a winning strategy for everyone. But all companies need to rigorously reassess each of their functions as possible outsourcing candidates. Presented in this article is a simple three-step process to identify which functions your company needs to own and protect, which can be best performed by what kinds of partners, and which could be turned into new business opportunities. The result of such an analysis will be a comprehensive capabilities-sourcing strategy. As a detailed examination of 7-Eleven's experience shows, the success of the strategy often hinges on the creativity with which partnerships are organized and managed. But only by first taking a broad, strategic view of capabilities sourcing can your company gain the greatest benefit from all of its sourcing choices.     

Market competition,management accounting systems and business unit performance

Increasing competition in the market, due to the application of modern manufacturing technology, deregulation of economies, and privatization or corporatization of government owned enterprises, makes decision makers use of management accounting systems more important (Bromwich, 1990). There have been calls for research into the use of management accounting systems under the changing circumstances (Kaplan, 1983; Shank and Govindarajan, 1989; Bromwich, 1990; Bromwich and Bhimani, 1994).This paper reports the results of a study which offers an explanation for the relationship between intensity of market competition and business unit performance, by incorporating into the model managers use of the information provided by the management accounting system (MAS). To assess the relationship, data were collected from 61 business unit managers by way of personal interviews. The results indicate that the intensity of market competition is a determinant of the use of the information which, in turn, is a determinant of business unit performance. In other words, managers use of the information plays a mediating role in the relationship between the intensity of market competition and business unit (BU) performance. An interpretation of the results is that those organizations which use the information can effectively face competition in the market and thereby improve performance.     

聚合营销与我国商业银行传统营销方式的变革

随着我国加入WTO和外资银行的准入,我国金融市场格局发生了深刻变化,市场参与者越来越多,新的金融产品和营销方式层出不穷,许多传统金融产品开始出现结构性的有效需求不足,使过去长期存在的银行服务卖方主导地位发生变化.本文针对目前我国商业银行存在的营销弊端,如指导理念落后、营销体系冗叠、营销方式单一、缺乏有效激励机制及未形成真正市场定价机制等状况,从一个全新角度引入"聚合营销"理论,设计了我国商业银行实施这种新型营销方式的具体步骤,从而提出商业银行实施聚合营销的三点方略,即客户与产品的聚合、促销与沟通的聚合以及管理与组织的聚合.     

我国第三部门与农村公共产品供给——以医疗卫生供给为研究视域

长期以来,由于我国在公共产品供给上实行＂二元制＂,我国的农村公共产品供给一直处于被边缘化的弱势地位。面对市场经济、多元治理的必然趋势,市场和政府在公共产品供给中的缺陷日益暴露,第三部门应运而生,发挥着重要的作用。但是我国第三部门在农村医疗卫生公共产品供给中面临诸多问题,因此要促进非政府组织对农村医疗卫生公共产品的供给,建立多主体供给体系;理顺非政府组织与政府的关系,承接部分农村管理职能;加强非政府组织自身建设,健全内部管理机制。     

A survey of key success factors in financial services marketing and brand management

What challenges and opportunities do financial services marketers face as they strive to improve marketing and brand performance, relevance, value and accountability within their organisations? To help answer this question, MCorp., a strategic brand and marketing consultancy, surveyed marketing executives from 67 financial services institutions across the USA in the autumn of 2004. The survey grouped responses into several categories, ranging from an understanding of how marketing and brand performance is tracked, to respondents' views on specific challenges to improve marketing and branding effectiveness. Across all categories, data drove two ‘big-picture’ conclusions which reveal key strategic issues facing financial services marketers today. First, there is a stated lack of brand and marketing performance information, and an absence of the systems and programmes to track it. Secondly, there is a perceived lack of top-down organisational understanding of the importance, value and meaning of brand within respondent organisations. Within the overall context of these conclusions, analysis led to a series of key findings, and drove specific recommendations for addressing the issues raised. While the illustrations given are based on data gathered from institutions in the USA, the author's experience suggests that the conclusions and attendant recommendations can serve as a basis for process and performance improvement in any financial services institution.     

Practice papers: The evolution of segmentation methods in financial services: Where next?

Over the last few years, the financial services market has seen a proliferation of new players and new channels. Customers have increased expectations of being offered the right products, at the right time and for the right reasons. Demographics and affluence have always been the backbone of segmentation tools, but is this still sufficient to meet the challenges that today's marketers face? This paper is a review of how customer segmentation has evolved within the financial services market and the corresponding demand for consumer information. It assesses whether today's segmentation tools remain sufficiently innovative to provide marketers with the information they require in order to maintain competitive advantage in a highly competitive marketplace.     

Embedding process mining into financial statement audits

The audit of financial statements is a complex and highly specialized process. Digitalization and the increasing automation of transaction processing create new challenges for auditors who carry out those audits. New data analysis techniques offer the opportunity to improve the auditing of financial statements and to overcome the limitations of traditional audit procedures when faced with increasingly large amounts of financially relevant transactions that are processed automatically or semi-automatically by computer systems. This study discusses process mining as a novel data analysis technique which has been receiving increased attention in the audit practice. Process mining makes it possible to analyse business processes in an automated manner. This study investigates how process mining can be integrated into contemporary audits by reviewing the relevant audit standards and incorporating the results from a field study. It demonstrates the feasibility of embodying process mining within financial statement audits in accordance with contemporary audit standards and generally accepted audit practices. Implementation of process mining increases the reliability of the audit conclusions and improves the robustness of audit evidence by replacing manual audit procedures. Process mining as novel data mining technique provides auditors the means to keep pace with current technological developments and challenges.     

An approach for the identification of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities using a financial services customer database

The collection, management and manipulation of customer data are key to the successful operation of many relationship marketing and customer relationship management endeavours. To make effective use of the data, however, requires that organisations know how to analyse it in order to generate valuable information for marketing purposes. One of the key challenges to maintaining an ongoing relationship with customers is to be able to predict what products customers will need to buy next and at what point so that appropriate marketing offers can be made. This paper illustrates an analytical approach that can be used in such a situation. Using actual customer data from a financial institution, the paper illustrates the application of segmentation analysis, purchase acquisition trees and survival analysis. While the results are of particular interest to financial institutions, the methodology has applicability in a number of contexts where customer data are available.