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Examines the strength of credit unions in the UK, and assesses their future developments and possible threat to the clearing banks in terms of competing for the same markets. Emphasises that the first credit union was formed in 1846 by Bavarian farmers who pooled their savings and made loans to neighbours, during a bad winter, at lower rates than commercial lenders. Says there are at present 200,000 credit unions world‐wide with 120million members, though the UK possesses only 55 credit unions with less than 10,000 members and assets of only £1million. Discusses potential markets in the UK and gives opinions on this. Looks at various other savings and loan institutions and at attitudes to clearing banks. Concludes that there is much to be gained by obtaining credit union accounts.

Presents in the first part a research project designed to explore use and attitudes towards banks by weekly, cash‐paid workers. Discusses in the second part, an attempt to summarize views of workers, employers, government and banks with regard to payments by cash and bank credit transfer, along with the possibilities for revising payment methods in the UK. Explores attitudes and behaviour of weekly, cash‐paid workers to banks, other financial institutions, and to their own personal finances. Uses tables to give extra emphasis in explaining the responses in greater detail. Closes the piece by saying the market function must be helped by the bank persuading weekly, cash‐paid workers to open and use a current account, showing advantages over competitors, as well as benefits and satisfaction to gaining use of its services.

The banking environment is characterised by continuing social, economic, technological and regulatory change, and current challenges include increasing competition from both bank and non‐bank institutions, rapidly developing technological innovation, and changing customer needs. The focus is on technological developments and the Nordic Bank environment, and findings from a survey among Norwegian companies are presented. The Survey considers their use of and attitudes towards electronic banking services. Recommendations are made with respect to the marketing activities of Norwegian banks with regard to electronic cash management services for corporate clients, and the future for such services.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of customer service/service quality in business‐to‐business contexts.

An in‐depth case study was used to discover the perceptions of both key individuals in the supplying company and key customers.

The paper shows that that customer service/service quality in a business‐to‐business context is a complex and multifaceted issue, the different parties in a relationship have differing perceptions of what constitutes service quality and that actors from the wider network can have an impact on perceptions of service quality.

This work is tentative in nature so it is not possible to generalise the findings to a wider context. However, it suggests that this area needs much more detailed and in‐depth investigation.

Managers need to be aware of the complexity of customers' service quality perceptions in a business‐to‐business context. They must consider dynamics, actions of other actors and how best to demonstrate their expertise and experience.

The findings of this research, although only exploratory, are significant because they are one of the few pieces of research into business‐to‐business service quality in which perceptions of quality from both sides of the dyad are collected and analysed.

This paper is focused on service failure and recovery in the hotel industry in the UK. The objectives of the research were to: assess the types and magnitude of service failures experienced by hotel guests; evaluate the service recovery strategies used by hotels and their effectiveness; and discover whether or not there were differences in attitudes and behaviour between business and leisure guests. Data were collected from a sample of guests in a four‐star hotel. Discussion of the findings leads to some suggestions for improvements for hotel management.

There have been numerous studies on measures of service quality, such as SERVQUAL and SERVPERF, in a variety of contexts, but the validity of these instruments in Asian markets is under‐researched. The present study was focused in South Korea and data on expectations, perceptions and importance measures were collected from 153 bank customers. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the measurement scales lacked validity with the South Korean sample, and principal component analyses revealed that SERVQUAL and SERVPERF were not uni‐dimensional. An amended SERVQUAL type scale showed three factors similar to the original SERVQUAL analysis, and an amended SERVPERF type scale showed two factors, with most of the original items converged on different conceptual dimensions.

Proposes that organisational expansion has occurred among the major clearing banks as a result of mergers, and has led to a heavy concentration of the banking sector. Sheds light on the competition between the clearing banks which has become increasingly evident, together with competition for these banks from a variety of other banks and financial institutions. Investigates the extent of computerisation and the growth of cheque cards, bank‐based credit cards and a variety of automated facilities. Goes on to discuss the marketing of bank services, present bank account ownership, consumer saving and borrowing, and the segmentation of the bank account market. Concludes that banks have a number of hurdles to overcome in order to attract account holders from the segment of low social status who are, typically, paid weekly in cash and these are all potential customers.

A marketing planning framework to aid political parties in improving their image and co‐ordinating election campaigns has been developed to reflect the changing nature of electoral campaigning in the developed world towards the need for more long‐term planning; together with the development and implementation of marketing models in a wider sphere of social situations. The planning model has been developed using both a hypothetico‐deductive and an inductive approach, incorporating recent developments in US and UK political campaign management and depth interviews with political strategists in the UK. Suggests that national political parties need to co‐ordinate their election campaigns more effectively in order to strengthen their image among key citizen and voter groups by determining which target areas are most in need of resources. Further research is needed to determine how to position the party and to select and place advertising in the relevant media. Concludes that local election campaigns are becoming more co‐ordinated by national parties but that such co‐ordination neglects to provide local area research and telemarketing campaigns, and post‐election analysis exercises to monitor strengths and weaknesses in party strategy and campaign plan implementation.

Findings are presented from an investigation of customer care in major UK organisations in the financial services sector, to include banks, building societies and insurance companies. Attention was focused on the need for customer care and service quality, and the development, implementation and evaluation of customer care/service programmes, as well as associated staff and management training activities.

Customer satisfaction is a significant issue for most marketers. Previous research has identified various factors that determine customer satisfaction in retail banking sector in Western countries. The current paper reports findings from a survey, which looked into determinants of customer satisfaction in the retail banking in Pakistan. A total of 300 questionnaires were randomly distributed to customers of a specific bank in Pakistan. Results indicate that there was a strong relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction. There was, however, no relationship between customer satisfaction and tangible aspects of the service environment. The paper discusses implications for bank management.