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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/EUM0000000004461. When citing the article, please cite: James F. Devlin, (1997), “Adding value to retail financial services”, Journal of Marketing Practice: Applied Marketing Science, Vol. 3 Iss 4 pp. 251 - 267.

“Brand architecture” is an organisation's approach to the design and management of its brand portfolio. Previous research, focused on the views of practitioners, identified a “multi‐corporate” approach in financial services, where a “family of main brands” was incorporated into an organisation's brand portfolio, often in the form of brands traditionally associated with separate companies. The current study seeks to provide contrasting insights from consumer data and to highlight the conceptual and practical implications of the findings.

A qualitative methodology was adopted for the study incorporating six focus groups containing an average of nine participants.

The findings from the current study offer empirical support for the conceptualisation of the corporate brand playing a predominant role in services markets. In doing so, the findings also suggest that the alternative conceptualization of a “multi‐corporate” approach advocated by practitioners and identified previously is not validated by consumer‐based research.

The context of the study reported may be limited by its restriction to a single category, financial services.

Practitioners' rationales for maintaining multiple brands are, in the main, undermined by the views of consumers. Organisations should consider rationalising their brand architecture in order to benefit from significant cost savings.

The consumer perspective on brand architecture is significantly under‐researched and as a result this paper provides valuable insights, and a significant contribution to existing literature.

The primary objective of this paper is to formulate a research agenda in the area of consumer evaluation and competitive advantage in retail financial services markets. In order to achieve this objective, a brief exposition of the market‐led view of competitive advantage is provided, which emphasises the importance of the provision of “customer value” in the relevant market. The process of consumer evaluation of financial services offerings is then reviewed and potential problems in consumer understanding of some types of financial services offerings are highlighted. The implications of such problems for the formulation of value adding strategies are explored with reference to the conceptualisation of the financial service offering and in particular which elements of the offering may be particularly important in adding value in the eyes of consumers. Finally, propositions for research are developed and explored, with the aim of informing both academics and practitioners.

This study explores practitioner views regarding which elements of the service offering to emphasise when formulating strategies to add value and, hence, gain competitive advantage in services markets. In particular, the case of retail financial services is emloyed to investigate hypotheses regarding variations in importance of elements of the service offer in adding value due to increased complexity and intangibility of some offerings and the resultant implications for consumer evaluation. Evidence suggests that these issues may be particularly relevant in the context of services and that consequently many of the common prescriptions regarding strategy formulation may be rather more difficult for services organisations to implement. It is found that factors such as image and reputation of the organisation, as well as functional service quality, are perceived to be particularly important in adding value to more complex financial services offerings. More surprisingly, the features and quality of the core service provided are also perceived to be more important in adding value to complex services. In addition, factors such as price, location and recovery are perceived to be significantly more important in adding value to more simple, rather than complex, offerings. Finally, conclusions are presented.

The strategic importance of distribution for financial services was reflected in and reinforced by the provisions of the Financial Services Act. Through requirements relating to polarization, best advice and commission disclosure, the Financial Services Act sought to create a regulatory framework which would provide the level of investor protection which was appropriate in a market characterized by a high level of information asymmetry and a heavy dependence on commission‐based selling. In practice the desired level of investor protection has failed to materialize, and this can be attributed not so much to a failure of the principles within the Financial Services Act as to a failure in the way in which those principles have been implemented.

Explores practitioner views as to how to formulate strategies for adding value and, hence, gain competitive advantage, given the characteristics of many services and the resultant implications for consumer evaluation of offerings. In particular, the case of retail financial services exhibiting increased complexity, intangibility and impalpability in the eyes of most consumers. Finds that the features and quality of the core service provided are judged by managers to be more important in adding value to more complex services, as are organisational factors such as image and reputation. Price is perceived to be significantly more important in adding value to more simple, rather that complex, offering. Presents conclusions and explores managerial implications.

The issue of distribution of retail financial services has received growing attention in the academic and professional literature and has been hailed as an increasingly important factor in determining whether or not a company competes effectively in its chosen markets. In an increasingly competitive and deregulated environment, superior distribution strategies concerned with how to communicate with, and deliver products to the consumer can provide institutions with significant competitive advantage in the marketplace. In effect distribution provides the basis for differentiation rather than the core service itself. Discusses developments in the distribution of retail banking services in the UK; more particularly, the emergence of home and telephone retail banking delivery systems will be highlighted, with the successful introduction of a telephone banking service by First Direct, a subsidiary of Midland Bank, being used as a case study to explore current developments.

Evaluates the working of the Financial Services Act, comparing its early promise with a rising tide of criticism, suggesting that self regulation does not adequately safeguard the consumer interest.

The purpose of this article is to derive, test and validate a comprehensive, inclusive measure of perceptions of fairness in consumers of financial services, as current attempts to measure fairness in a broad-based multi-dimensional manner are underdeveloped.

A quantitative approach where a large-scale sample of the perceptions of financial services consumers is taken in three periods. Subsequently, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis are used to analyse the data.

Fairness comprises three distinct but related elements, namely, procedural, interactional and distributive fairness, and further sub-dimensions are also apparent. The measurement scale exhibits a high degree of validity and reliability and represents a robust measure of fairness perceptions.

Previous conceptual suppositions as to the multi-dimensional nature of fairness are strongly supported. A comprehensive scale is provided for fellow researchers to utilise in other settings. The main limitation is that the measures were tested in a single context, although this is offset by the large scale of the pilot exercise and multiple waves of data collection.

Perceptions of fairness can be measured accurately and tracked, measures for sub-dimensions of fairness can be compared and differences among sectors and demographic segments can be explored. Perceptions of fairness can be related to factors such as trust and purchase intentions in addition to other attitudinal measures.

The fairness measure developed, tested and validated here is the most comprehensive, multi-dimensional measure of fairness available that the authors know of. As such, it represents a valuable conceptual contribution to the assessment of perceptions of fairness.