Management of Financial Services Marketing: Issues and Perceptions

The aim is to identify those areas of marketing in the financial services sector that deserve to be given priority attention. A number of marketing areas are identified and assessed on their scope for improvement, the ease with which they can be changed and also on the sensitivity of the performance of the organisation to an improvement in the area. The perspective is that of senior financial services marketing managers. The managers picked out pricing policy as one factor deserving to be given the highest priority. Improvements here are possible and, in addition, will show up in better company performance. Two other factors considered to be worth priority attention are the customer interface and marketing influence, although both are thought to be more difficult to change than pricing policy. Improvements in the new product development strategy area, whilst likely to produce significant improvements in company performance, were the hardest of all to achieve.