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The paper aims to identify which factors determine (German) retail banking customers' intention to adopt a new remuneration system for financial advice. The new system is a pay‐per‐use advisory model that supersedes existing commission‐based advisory approaches.

The paper develops and tests a comprehensive conceptual framework that includes perceived innovation characteristics, relationship quality, and socio‐demographic and psychographic variables to explain adoption intentions of the new remuneration system. The data come from a survey among clients of a large German retail bank.

Perceived innovation characteristics (i.e. relative advantage) largely determine the intention to adopt the fee‐based advisory model. Consumer and relationship quality variables do not directly impact adoption intentions, but have an indirect effect through influencing perceived innovation characteristics and moderating their relative importance. Relationship quality indicators, such as satisfaction with the current service and trust in the bank or its employees, do not impact customers' intentions to switch to the new remuneration system.

The paper describes a (case) study using data from a large German retail bank. Future research may investigate the findings' (international) generalizability using different datasets and also assess additional drivers of customers' intentions to adopt a fee‐based advisory model.

The results suggest that banks should always explain the relative advantage of financial service innovations to their clients, as existing satisfaction and trust levels are not sufficient to ensure adoption.

This is the first paper examining the adoption of a new remuneration system for financial advice in the retail banking industry. By assessing a variety of variables the authors increase understanding of why customers adopt or reject such complex and difficult to evaluate service innovations.

The Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) Consultation Paper 121 suggesting depolarisation in the retail financial services sector has generated a great deal of debate. The motivation for the reforms, primarily to improve the position of the consumer, cannot be disputed. Nevertheless, in attempting such a wide‐sweeping change, it is clear that the reforms could bring difficulties as well as improvements. This paper argues that, to the extent that the current polarisation regime is detrimental for the consumer, this can be addressed without dismantling the basic framework of the current advice system. It acknowledges that there is a need for greater consumer education in this area, and that more needs to be done to address the needs of lower‐income consumers. Nevertheless, it is argued that the advantages anticipated as a result of the more radical reforms in the Consultation Paper are likely to be accompanied by problems that could negate the overall benefit accruing to consumers.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is about to implement wholesale reforms of the regulatory structure of advice in the retail financial services sector. Instead of having to choose between a “tied adviser” or an “independent financial adviser” (IFA) under a “polarised” regime, consumers will have a much wider choice in terms of the range of products and scope of advice available under the new “depolarised” structure. In undertaking these reforms, the FSA aims “to improve consumer outcomes” by dealing with what it argues are market failures in the retail financial services market. This paper assesses whether the FSA’s final blueprint for financial advice can provide the improved consumer outcomes the FSA intends. It critically examines the issues of choice and quality for both products and advice, as well as considering the extent to which the reforms will create the kind of “empowered” consumers the FSA appears to expect. It argues that the reforms may not appreciably address the market failures the FSA sets out to remedy, and suggests that this is due to the likely inability of consumers to understand and take advantage of the new marketplace that is being created. This paper suggests that much greater emphasis should have been placed on financial education and extending the availability of advice before attempting such radical reforms.

In the spring of 1982, I published an article in Reference Services Review on marketing libraries and information services. The article covered available literature on that topic from 1970 through part of 1981, the time period immediately following Kotler and Levy's significant and frequently cited article in the January 1969 issue of the Journal of Marketing, which was first to suggest the idea of marketing nonprofit organizations. The article published here is intended to update the earlier work in RSR and will cover the literature of marketing public, academic, special, and school libraries from 1982 to the present.

In the context of increasing private provision of social security and welfare, alongside what is argued to be the ‘financialisation’ of daily lives, individuals in many countries face an array of potentially difficult financial choices and decisions. Limitations in levels of knowledge and expertise may lead them to consider seeking financial advice. Yet, in the wake of the great financial crisis, trust in the financial services industry is low.

At the same time, in a number of countries the financial advice sector is facing its own challenges. These include regulatory issues concerning the definition, suitability and delivery of advice; the affordability of advice; and the challenges and opportunities facing the advice sector as a result of the increasing use of technology in the financial services sector.

This chapter examines the implications of these developments for the regulation and governance of financial advice in the context of Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II. In particular, it considers the example of the UK and issues this raises for the implementation of recent European regulatory reforms.

Against the backdrop of the Financial Services Authority's Retail Distribution Review, this study aims to present an assessment of the potential development of a UK personal financial advising profession. The development of a profession dedicated to providing financial advice is critically discussed by assessing a range of regulatory and industry views.

The study indicates both a critical literature review and survey of retail financial services planning advisors. The critical literature review considers the market failures which surround the provision of financial planning advice in the UK. A survey of professionally qualified personal financial planning advisers ascertains perceptions of developments to the current regulatory framework to accommodate a more professionally based system of financial advice.

It is reported that a conflict between the current regulatory system and the traditional liberal model of the professions exist. This conflict inhibits the development of a financial services advising profession. Survey evidence collected from professionally qualified financial planning advisors bears out this perspective.

Two key research implications emerge from this study. First, the development of a professional model of financial planning advising appears to be inhibited by the current regulatory system. Secondly, current regulation of financial services sales through a market mechanism appears to limit access to financial planning advice.

The study raises two key practical implications. First, the current system of regulating financial sales, appears to exclude a substantial segment of the population from access to professional financial planning services. Secondly, the development of a profession and increasing professional behaviour in retail financial services sales conflicts with the current model of regulation.

This research paper both reviews the wider arguments surrounding the regulation of retail financial services sales and forwards new evidence as to the attitudes of professionally qualified financial advisors towards regulatory change. This has importance in clarifying a number of the key policy concerns in the regulation of financial services sales.

In June of 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“the SEC”) voted to publish Proposed Regulation B (“Regulation B”), which will implement provisions of the Gramm‐Leach‐Blily Act of 1999 (“GLBA”) that identify activities which banks may engage in without registering as brokers or dealers under The Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 (“The Exchange Act”); effectively governing the manner in which banks, savings associations and savings banks effect securities transactions. By enacting the GLBA, Congress repealed most of the remaining vestiges of the ownership restrictions that prevented banks, securities and insurance firms from combining, thereby allowing them to adopt the universal banking model through the creation of financial conglomerates known as “financial holding companies.” Proposed Regulation B (“Regulation B”) supercedes the SEC's final interim rules issued in May of 2001 with respect to banking and brokering activities. In general, banks and their regulators have found Regulation B to be far more acceptable than the final interim rules of 2001. On a practical level, Regulation B results in considerably more work for banks. This article will examine the existing law as it pertains to banks engaging in broker‐dealer activities and highlight the key provisions of Regulation B.

Past e‐service research has largely concentrated on customer responses to online retailers. The present study sheds light on the determinants of customer loyalty to a content‐based service, a healthcare Web site. Content‐based service providers must build a loyal customer base in order to attract advertisers and sponsors. Lack of trust has been one of the most important reasons for consumers not adopting online services involving financial exchanges, but trust appears to be equally important to exchanges that require divulging sensitive information, such as health issues. Results reveal that loyalty to the health site is satisfaction‐driven, but that trust is the main antecedent of satisfaction. Need fulfilment, responsiveness, security and technical functionality of the Web site are shown to influence trust. Managerial implications are provided.

Examines changes in the life and pensions industry in the UK with particular regard to distribution. Reviews changes at the industry and product level and the major impacts these have had on customer attitudes and service and the way in which distribution strategies have failed to put the customer first over the past 20 years. Argues that new entrants have changed the benchmarks for distribution in terms of productivity and customer orientation and that existing companies and distribution channels will face an increasingly difficult challenge to remain competitive. Concludes that there will be rationalization of the life and pensions industry and, along with it, a shift towards more acceptable and innovative forms of distribution with traditional direct sales being the major loser and bancassurance and direct writing being the main winners.

This paper aims to examine how the efficacy of organizational routines varies and the mechanism through which organizational routines improve firm performance.

A theoretical model is proposed and tested using data from 53 interviews with financial services experts and 291 survey responses from financial advisors.

Operational and adaptive routines work through absorptive capacity to positively contribute to firm performance. The positive effects of adaptive routines are magnified under market governance.

The examination of organizational routines is focused on routines at the firm level. Therefore, higher corporate-level routines were not measured. Response rate for the survey is a possible concern, so future research will benefit from increasing the response rate from the focal population.

This study benefits firms facing the dual role of customization and discipline in working with clients toward service delivery. The findings suggest that firms should develop both operational and adaptive routines, particularly when operating under market governance.

This study identified two categories of routines (operational and adaptive) and the circumstances in which the causal link between routines and performance varies. This study examined the potential moderating influence of a governance mode (market vs hierarchy). Absorptive capacity was identified as a mediator between the use of routines and firm performance.