E-business opportunities in financial services

Over many years, technological developments have enabled financial services products to be sold and administered via remote distribution channels. E-business is the latest channel whose potential is being explored by both traditional financial services players and new entrants alike. But, in their haste to ‘go online’, are organisations, new and old, falling into the ‘technology trap’ and ignoring the fundamentals underpinning financial services retailing and, perhaps, undermining some of their ‘segment-of-one’ strategies? This paper concludes that the key to successful e-financial services retailing is to take the nuances, attributes, techniques and skills that have accompanied financial services products in the physical world and reinvent them in an e-environment. Only by following this approach will e-business avoid being labelled as a solution looking for a problem. UK high street banks are continuing to extend the choice of channel through which customers can manage their money, eg e-banking. But it is suggested that channels such as e-banking potentially reduce the level of personal contact between bank and customer to the extent that a ‘virtual’ relationship develops. This paper concludes that, given the tendency towards ‘virtualisation’, it is inconceivable that bank–customer relationships will become any more intimate in the future. Indeed, a greater degree of personalisation in customer communication may be the very best that banks are able to offer.     

Branding and relationships: Customer and supplier perspectives

This paper explores and investigates the role of branding within financial services. Specifically, the study aims to assess the importance of branding and its associated elements including brand image and brand experience in the relationships that exist between consumers and their financial brands. It aims to achieve this through research, which identifies gaps between the managerial and consumer perspectives on branding in relationships in retail financial services. It is well established that the characteristics of services are different from those of manufactured goods and that service personnel play a central role in the services experience. Moreover, the concept of relationship marketing within services proclaims the importance of one-to-one relationships between businesses and customers as well as relationships between consumers and their brands. Drawing from the fields of brand management, relationship marketing and services marketing, this research aims to investigate the perceptional differences between consumers and suppliers in relation to the importance of branding in financial service relationships. The research findings indicate that brand experience appears to be far more salient than brand image in shaping and building meaningful and lasting brand perceptions and promoting customer retention.     

A content analysis of financial services magazine print ads: Are they reaching women?

The financial services industry has undergone what can only be called a ‘transformation’ over the last 25 years. Deregulation has increased competition in all sectors. Thus, firms must understand the needs of their customers. The number of women as financial services decision makers has been rapidly growing, and it is estimated that within 15 years women will represent over 65 per cent of top wealth-holders. This study looks at how the financial services industry communicates with potential women customers through print advertising. The most frequently used appeals when advertising in women's magazines are similar to those used in men's magazines, but they differ from those used in general magazines. Surprisingly, advertisers, however, do not seem to tailor their ads differently to women than to men, despite evidence that women respond to different approaches.     

How valuable is word of mouth?

The customers who buy the most from you are probably not your best marketers. What's more, your best marketers may be worth far more to your company than your most enthusiastic consumers. Those are the conclusions of professors Kumar and Petersen at the University of Connecticut and professor Leone at Ohio State University, who analyzed thousands of customers in research focused on a telecommunications company and a financial services firm. In this article, the authors present a straightforward tool that can be used to calculate both customer lifetime value (CLV), the worth of your customers' purchases, and customer referral value (CRV), the value of their referrals. Knowing both enables you to segment your customers into four constituent parts: those that buy a lot but are poor marketers (which they term Affluents); those that don't buy much but are very strong salespeople for your firm (Advocates); those that do both well (Champions); and those that do neither well (Misers). In a series of one-year experiments, the authors demonstrated the effectiveness of this segmentation approach. Offering purchasing incentives to Advocates, referral incentives to Affluents, and both to Misers, they were able to move significant proportions of all three into the Champions category. Both companies reaped returns on their marketing investments greater than 12-fold--more than double the normal marketing ROI for their industries. The power of this tool is its ability to help marketers decide where to focus their efforts. Rather than waste funds encouraging big spenders to spend slightly more while overlooking the power of customer evangelists who don't buy enough to seem important, you can reap much higher rewards by nudging big spenders to make referrals and urging enthusiastic proponents of your wares to buy a bit more.     

Money on the move: Opportunities for financial service providers in the ‘third space’

Delivering financial services to customers on the move is an emerging imperative for the industry, as at present the services available do not meet the needs of customers. Such services could empower customers to control their own finances, at the same time as reducing costs for companies. Those in most need of such services require top line account updates at present, but also welcome the possibility of more advanced account management services. These services have the capacity greatly to improve relationships with customers; ‘guardian-services’ which monitor financial performance and respond accordingly will foster ‘good will’ and increase loyalty. While complex services requiring expert advice should remain branch based, new data-enabled mobile phones will establish new opportunities for service provision in the future.     

Share of wallet's role in customer profitability

Understanding the financial contribution customers make to their organisations is an initial step in customer relationship management. Set in the banking industry, this paper examines the strength of ‘share of wallet’ as a proxy variable for measuring customer profitability. Data from a study of 1,100 personal retail banking customers of a New Zealand regional bank were used in combination with the bank's own customer contribution data for each of those respondents. Results indicate that although share of wallet might be used as a proxy for customer contribution at a macro level of customer classification, details of specific financial relationships customers have with their main bank are still necessary. Nevertheless, share of wallet ought to become a standard entry in a bank's customer database.     

The marketing cube

Today's business professional should consider three dimensions, or success drivers, when devising marketing programmes: profitability, profit potential and likelihood for retention — the ’marketing cube‘. Simply said, the margins on customers who fall into the ’right customer‘ group, as defined by this framework, are too great to ignore. Profit, widely confused with lifetime value, is a fact based on previous behaviour — and many financial service organisations are now calculating revenue minus costs for each customer to determine profit. Profit potential is an estimate of one individual customer's contribution to a company's bottom line. It emerges from a model. The modelled profit less actual is referred to as ’profit opportunity‘.Retention is the third component of the framework, and here there are ways to predict the loss of revenue from customers and implement preventive measures, before this loss even happens. A matrix of these three dimensions can help any financial service marketer build a next most logical product model and business rules that govern a successful customer relationship management (CRM) programme.     

Price satisfaction and personnel efficiency as antecedents of overall satisfaction from consumer credit products and positive word of mouth

The paper aims to explore the potential impact of ‘bank personnel efficiency’ and ‘price satisfaction’ on overall customer satisfaction of consumer credit products and positive word of mouth (WOM). Furthermore it aims to provide bank managers with useful insights into the development of high quality relationships with customers. ‘Personnel efficiency’, is related to the human factor of service quality, while ‘price satisfaction’ refers to the customers’ subjective view of the bank's pricing policy. The research involved a review of the available literature on service quality dimensions and their effect on satisfaction and WOM. For the collection of data, a survey was designed and conducted in the greater area of Athens, Greece. The research questionnaire was administered by means of personal interviews to 750 bank customers. Data analysis, using structural equation modelling, suggests that ‘personnel efficiency’ and ‘price satisfaction’ are antecedents of overall ‘customer satisfaction’, which is a prerequisite for positive ‘word of mouth’.     

The mediating role of happiness on the effect of locomotion and effort on salesperson’s performance and cross-selling: the case of financial insurance

In this study, the authors propose a theoretical framework and show how salespeople’s locomotion orientation and effort increase financial sales outcomes (e.g., performance and cross-selling). We propose that a salesperson’s happiness plays a mediating mechanism in these main effects. The authors collected data from two samples. In Study 1, the authors collected data from financial insurance brokers, which worked as a link between insurance companies and customers. In Study 2, the authors analyzed answers from salespeople working on home improvement and construction products and services. First, the results demonstrate that the salespersons’ locomotion (an orientation toward a behavior), effort, and happiness increased sales performance (main effects). Second, salespersons’ locomotion and effort have an indirect effect through individuals’ happiness on our dependent variables, such as sales performance, product performance and cross-selling. Firms can improve individuals’ locomotion and effort by developing goal setting and goal striving.

     

How small business firms select a bank: Comparisons between the United States and Australia

This paper compares the factors that small business firms in the United States and Australia consider when selecting a banking partner. The results show that small firms in both countries ranked the bank's willingness to accommodate their credit needs as being important. However, US firms consider the range of products and services, convenient location, financial health and personal relationships as being more important. Australian firms, on the other hand, place greater emphasis on long-term relationships, day-to-day efficiency and competitive prices. Since most of these differences can be explained as a result of differences in banking industry structures, the study may have marketing implications for banks that serve small business customers in the USA and other parts of the world.     

Brand positioning in financial services: A longitudinal test to find the best brand position

Brand positioning is a core activity of most marketing departments. In this paper, the relationship between six different positions and customer vulnerability is tested over time in the business financial services market. Two particular attributes relating to fees and charges and relationship/service were found to have strong relationships with customer vulnerability, both across brands and over time. This research suggests that the ’better‘ brand positions, as defined here, can be common across brands. Therefore, marketing managers of financial services should perhaps not be striving for a unique position for the brand, but aim for distinctiveness in the way the position is communicated. Research techniques to identify ’better‘ positions should also not assume that these ’better‘ positions will be those that differentiate between brands.     

App service: How do consumers perceive the quality of financial service apps on smart devices?

Apps on smart devices such as phones and tablets have enabled financial services firms not only to provide greater convenience and flexibility to customers, but also to get them to do a lot of the work entailed in these services. This has changed the character of service in many ways, including the nature of service quality where service is no longer delivered by people, but by means of technology. The study reported here used an amended version of the SERVQUAL instrument to assess consumers’ perception of the quality of the service delivered by the apps of their financial services providers. Three dimensions of app service quality emerge: reliability, personal and visibles. Generally, consumers are reasonable satisfied with the quality of service provided by their financial apps and prefer them to visits to service providers physical locations and rate them as highly as online service provision on PCs or laptops. Limitations are acknowledged, managerial implications drawn and avenues for future research are identified.     

Banks,customer relationship management and barriers to the segment of one

Technological advances are changing the nature of marketing channels and altering how consumers shop. The same changes are improving marketers' ability to capture and manipulate data, leading to an enhanced understanding of customers. Financial institutions are using these technological capabilities to target the individual needs of customers. As the benefits of customer relationship management (CRM) are brought to the fore, this focus on the ‘segment of one’ has become a feature of the service offered by some banks and financial services institutions. This paper reviews case study evidence of progress towards the segment of one and identifies the barriers that are impeding progress.     

Promotional messages in multichannel banking: Attractive or annoying?

Financial service providers possess a great deal of information about their customers. Customer information is used to serve customers and deliver the right messages to the right customer groups. Owing to the nature of financial services – that is, the need for credibility, long-term commitment and involvement of sensitive personal information – the planning and implementation of suitable marketing is extremely important. Financial services are offered through multiple channels, but electronic channels have increased in importance both for customer acquisition and retention purposes. In addition, electronic channels offer personalization possibilities that did not exist before. In this study, we examine, with the help of electronic focus group interviews, the kind of channels customers prefer when promotional messages include different types of personalization. In addition, the acceptance of promotional messages in the online banking context is explored. The results indicate that the channel preferences of customers diverge depending on the type of personalization used in the message. Furthermore, based on the opinions of customers concerning several authentic online banners, a personalization matrix was developed. The findings show that preference-matching personalization with informative content is accepted by the majority of customers. The article offers financial managers new perspectives on bank marketing in general, and online bank marketing in particular.     

Targeting customers based on economic worth

A common objective for many financial service companies today is to focus on their best customers and to align their investment in customers based on the economic worth of the customers. Yet, as simple and practical as this seems, many companies have not been able to implement the tools and processes that will allow them to do this effectively. One tool that helps identify the economic worth of customers is ‘grading’. Grading is a powerful tool that helps companies manage customer relationships based on economic worth. While there are several grading methodologies and many variations within these methodologies, the best approach is one that is tailored to a company's specific situation and one that is capable of being implemented. By using grading in combination with other tools and processes, financial service firms can target their customers more economically, reduce customer defection and increase revenue.     

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.     

Developing an index of online customer satisfaction

This paper integrates and applies the concept of ‘satisfaction’ from three fields: management information systems (MIS), marketing and e-commerce. E-customers are viewed as both computer users and customers and as a result researching customer satisfaction in e-commerce needs to integrate aspects of satisfaction from each of these fields. This study defines e-customer satisfaction and develops an index using a weighted sum model. The index is tested using a Korean sample. Analyses suggest an acceptable model and a generalisable set of measures from which managers and researchers evaluate online satisfaction and, especially, marketing strategies in financial services industries.     

Customers’ ways of making sense of a financial service relationship through intersubjective mirroring of others

The importance of relationships between buyer and sellers in marketing research is well established. This study contributes to relationship marketing (RM) research as it examines the microfoundations of financial service buyer and seller relationships. The study uses intersubjective theory and a qualitative method with the purpose of conceptualising the qualitatively different ways customers experience face-to-face interactions with a service provider. An empirical study is conducted to determine, based on the customer's own words, what is experienced in the interaction between the customer and the provider. Findings from the empirical material show that not all personal interactions between customers and a service provider, in this case a bank, can be labelled as relationships. Instead, what customers do perceive as a relationship is an encounter where the interaction entails symmetry in the way the customer and the provider mirror each other. When customers receive a treatment in opposition to an expectation of intersubjectivity, they will not refer to the situation as a relationship and, subsequently, according to the underlying assumptions of RM, do not willingly engage in further business with the provider.     

Independent financial adviser (IFA)-based brand equity pyramid

This paper aims to evaluate the applicability of the existing brand equity pyramid models in the context of independent financial advisers (IFAs) in the UK financial services sector. Nine in-depth interviews with IFAs and nine in-depth corroboration interviews with senior marketing managers and employees in one of the UK’s largest financial services providers were undertaken for the purpose of the study. The findings indicate that when applied in the context of IFAs, the existing brand equity pyramid models require modification. These findings lead to the development of an IFA-based brand equity pyramid. The new model can provide insight for financial services marketing academics and practitioners on how IFAs perceive and evaluate financial services brands to be recommended to their customers. Our findings will help financial services providers to develop strong brands in the mind of IFAs.

     

Consent to direct marketing in the financial services sector

The development of communications technology in recent years has led to an expansion in ‘cold calling’, particularly as a means of selling financial services. While encouraging new entrants into the market and thereby increasing consumer choice and competitive prices, this is often viewed as an infringement of personal privacy. This paper attempts to reconcile the complex legal framework that has been put in place to restrict the use of unsolicited direct marketing and to show how, through the use of a carefully drafted data protection notice, the direct marketing of financial services may be conducted lawfully.