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.     

Responses: Geography as space and geography as place: The divide between political science and political geography continues

Steven Spiegel's article ‘Traditional Space vs. Cyberspace’ exemplifies the divide between political science and political geography. In trying to incorporate geographic factors into his consideration of post‐Cold War geopolitics, Spiegel equates his view with distance and less explicitly with territory. The attempt to position geography as central to international politics has failed once again because of the equation of spatial analysis with the field of geography. Ignorance and neglect of the place tradition, prominent in contemporary geography, is the most important factor in the continued failure of communication between Geography and International Relations.     

An observation analysis of e-service quality in online banking

This study focuses on observing customer perceptions of internet banking and e-service quality from a user-based perspective within an Irish context. The study involves an observational study of a purposive sample of 20 consumers based upon their perceptions of the Bank of Ireland website using unstructured and structured observation techniques. Respondents moved from basic to higher order gratifications according to IT experience and internet usage. While information and transaction gratifications were deemed key to online banking, enjoyment gratifications held limited associations, thus emphasising its functional nature. User group categorisations had a direct impact on online behaviour in terms of time spent evaluating in addition to the level of customer pro-activity. The paper highlights the value of the uses and gratifications categorisations system, which provides a key platform to the study of e-service quality and offers e-banking providers a more effective system of serving individual customer e-service needs. Online banking providers can make the process of using e-banking more enjoyable by enhancing website interactivity and creating unique online experiences. Future e-banking penetration and the success of complex financial product adoption will be dependent on proactive online marketing campaigns coupled with increased website responsiveness. This paper adopts a unique perspective by exploring e-service quality from the user-based approach by assessing the uses and gratifications sought by online users, and subsequently examines their impact on effective web design and the e-service dimensions deemed focal to premium usage.     

Comparative research on regional regulators’ associations: A theory-driven path for progress

Since the 1990s regional economic communities have been increasingly involved in the development of model telecommunications policies and regulations. Through semi-independent regional regulators’ associations, these communities aim to harmonize telecommunications policy and regulation across member states in hopes of stimulating cross-border investments and market development. To fully understand the role and effects of these administrative bodies, analyses are needed within and between a variety of regions. The research described herein facilitates such analyses by providing a series of theoretically derived propositions developed with reference to a number of regions including the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the European Union (EU).     

Identifying the ‘energy champion’: a consumer behaviour approach to understanding the home energy conservation market in Ireland

This paper builds on a chronological set of studies which develop a marketing approach to energy conservation in Ireland. Drawing on the fields of identity theory and self‐identity in consumption, it adopts a consumer behaviour approach to the segmentation of the market, analysing hedonic aspects of energy consumption. Using existential‐phenomenologicalism as a methodological frame, the focus of the two‐staged research is on collecting data from a small group of industry professionals and committed energy conservers, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the motivators for energy conservation behaviour. The results of this study reveal new traits of the energy conserver personality including a high aversion to consumption, a strong sense of caution with regard to personal finances and a marked interest in investing in energy‐saving technologies. Additional findings confirm personality traits previously associated with energy conservers such as active, thrifty, careful, technically minded and environmentally conscious. Although the market has been successful in targeting messages at the early adopter segment of energy conservers who are personally motivated, future marketing appeals to other market segments must focus on offering more tangible rewards for energy conservation behaviour. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

SOCIAL MATRICES AND INDICATORS IN THE TRADITIONAL AFRICAN ECONOMY

This paper discusses the relevance of the conventional national accounts systems to the traditional African economy and concludes that they contribute little because they omit certain economic activities and fail to recognise the reciprocity between social and economic activities. Social accounting is thus more relevant. Lack of statistical data may make it necessary to conduct special surveys and in some cases a tribe or village or economic region may be a more useful accounting unit than a nation. A modified system of accounts is suggested, based on the frame work of the four consolidated accounts of the SNA. It provides linkages to many more nonmonetised activities. Other linkages would be provided through supporting tables emphasising social activities and transfers. A system of transactor accounts in matrix form is also suggested. In the case of communities smaller than the nation several external transactor sectors could be included. It is recognised that the problem of evaluation of social activities and a number of economic activities remains to be solved and it is concluded that "time spent" may be the only common unit or value to equate such activities.
The final section deals with investment in human resources and proposes a balance sheet approach to indicative planning. This exercise would be related to demographic projections in several variants. Other factors to be analysed dynamically would be education and health status, public finance and, ultimately, distribution of income and wealth since it is noted that the process of monetisation is having an impact which may have important welfare implications.