Editorial

International Journal of Bank Marketing

ISSN: 0265-2323

Article publication date: 28 January 2014

88

Citation

Estelami, K.E.a.H. (2014), "Editorial", International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 32 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBM-09-2013-0105

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Bank Marketing, Volume 32, Issue 1

Financial institutions have a central role in supporting societal development. As countries develop, financial services firms contribute to a larger share of the gross domestic product, meaning that advances in the financial services sector are often correlated with social and economic development. The financial crisis demonstrated the ramifications of failures of the financial sector on society. The crisis displayed the crucial societal role that financial institutions play and the importance of proper management of these institutions. Customers, financial service firms, and governments, learned hard lessons during the crises. These lessons are evident in the introduction of new financial regulations around the world, and drastic changes in the behaviors of financial services providers and their customers. Now that the crisis has abated, we can look ahead and improve our understanding of financial services markets and marketing practice. Improved understanding of how financial services markets function will help develop a better financial services sector, with positive effects on society. Therefore, research in financial services marketing is a crucial undertaking from a societal point of view.

This issue of the International Journal of Bank Marketing helps advance knowledge about financial services markets and related marketing practices. Two of the papers in this issue advance our knowledge of customer perceptions of financial services. The first paper studies customer relationship quality in online banking. Banking is a relationship-oriented business, and as financial services are made available online to an increasing number of customers, it is important to be able to understand online relationship quality. The second paper studies customer satisfaction, and dissects the intricate nature of what drives customer satisfaction. The third paper provides an improved way to analyze consumer debt delinquency by considering the family life cycle. The fourth and final paper advances knowledge about how working practices in financial services firms can improve the staff's performance in customer contacts. Together, the four papers in this issue reflect the breadth and scope of financial services marketing, ranging from customer perceptions, to risk analysis, and the management of financial services organizations.

The growth in online banking has transformed the banking industry. Banking has often been one of the first industries to utilize large-scale commercial applications of new technologies, and in particular information technology. Research in online bank marketing has consequently been pushing into new frontiers. These efforts are evidenced in that some of the most cited papers in the International Journal of Bank Marketing are on online banking. In this issue, Brun, Rajaobelina, and Line study relationship quality in online banking. This area is important because customer relationship quality is such a widely applied and researched concept, but it has not been adequately researched in an online context. Due to the lack of prior research, this paper focuses on the development of a definition of the construct of online relationship quality. The study combines the theory of relationship quality with theories of online relationships to generate a hypothesized conceptualization of online relationship quality. This is empirically tested using a four-stage method, where four different samples were used to refine the construct. Altogether data from 768 customers show that online relationship quality can be defined as the trust, commitment and satisfaction that customers have in the online bank. The presented research also provides readers with a 21-item questionnaire that can be used by researchers and marketers in exploring online relationship quality.

The second paper in this issue covers one of the most widely used marketing concepts – customer satisfaction. Economists use customer satisfaction indices to analyze the economy, corporations use satisfaction measures to assess the market, and consumers often use satisfaction to describe the performance of services and goods. However, despite its widespread use, customer satisfaction has been found to have very little effect on the share of a customer's business that a firm can secure. In this issue, Aksoy develops an improved measure of satisfaction – a relative satisfaction measure – which measures how satisfied a customer is with a firm's service, in relation to services offered by competing firms. The relationship is tested on a sample of 4,712 financial service customers. The results show that measures of relative satisfaction accurately predict a financial service firm's share of the customer's business. The author then makes an additional contribution as she shows how the relative satisfaction measure can be used to analyze how financial services firms are positioned strategically in the marketplace.

The financial crisis demonstrated how important it is to understand the way consumers manage their household debt. As a result of the crisis, consumer protection laws and financial literacy campaigns have grown in significance around the world. Research has also grown to develop better theories and methods for understanding debt markets. In the current issue of the International Journal of Bank Marketing, Xiao and Yao study consumer debt delinquency as a function of the family lifecycle. The researchers use longitudinal data covering nearly two decades with a sample size of over 30,000. The paper develops a lifecycle theory by including the family lifecycle component, and by focusing on debt delinquency over the family lifecycle. The findings reveal that young couples with young children, and middle-aged singles with young and older children are more likely to experience financial delinquency. The findings also suggest that the family lifecycle theory can be successfully applied to analyze financial delinquency of customers – an issue of great relevance to banks, regulators and public policy advocates.

Bank marketing is a unique discipline in that it relies a great deal on trust-based customer relationships. These relationships can be heterogeneous, which means that the bank staff can perform a wide array of services, ranging from simple transactions to complex advisory services. In such an industry, customer contact employees play a crucial role, as they combine the bank's services into an offering that is customized for the customer. Due to this unique characteristic, banking has for many years been the context for much research on how customer contact employees can influence customers’ perceptions and their use of the bank's services. This research is extended in this issue, where Pousa and Mathieu examine the effects that the coaching of customer contact staff by bank managers can have on staff performance. Coaching is a growing form of transformational leadership, based on openness, respect, trust, and commitment. The theory purports that the effort made by the leader that coaches employees is reciprocated by increased employee empowerment and productivity. The paper studies coaching in the context of a large banking institution, and finds that customer contact staff increase their customer contact performance when coached. The findings also suggest that bank staff achieve this increased performance through better advice giving, and not due to increased selling effort. The findings extend previous research by adding new knowledge on how managers can use coaching to achieve improvements in both sales performance and advice giving. The primary implication of the research is that coaching can be effectively used by bank management as a means to improve performance on a range of functions.

The topics addressed by the papers featured in this issue of the International Journal of Bank Marketing point to the expanding reach of financial institutions and the wide range of services they offer to society. Understanding banking and financial services marketing includes the understanding of customer preferences, relationships, technology, aggregate market risk, and management of financial services firms. The papers presented in this issue help develop a clearer understanding of how customers perceive financial services, how online bank relationships are formed, how consumer debt can be analyzed, and how work in financial service firms can be organized to better serve customers. The resulting understanding helps advance marketing theories and provides the tools needed for more effective promotion of financial services. The presented research also provides direction on where future advancements can be made. The marketing knowledge and methodological tools presented in these papers can be improved to address evolving societal needs that financial institutions are required to constantly address. It is this constant strive for advancing marketing methods and theories that is central to the advancement of the field of financial services marketing and its central role in global socio-economic development.

Kent Eriksson and Hooman Estelami

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