The growth in the financial service industry in India has
been tremendous. According to the reviews in literature,
the driving force behind this development is the intense
competition among the major players in the industry. Moreover,
customers have become more demanding and prefer innovative
products and quality services at a faster rate from the
companies. As a result, a number of new products and services
like credit cards, ATMs, consumer finance, mutual funds,
etc., have become a norm. Intense competition among companies,
coupled with highly-demanding customers, have made the job
of financial service providers much tougher and challenging.
They need to understand the changing needs of the customers
and offer new products and services accordingly. In the
given scenario, relationship marketing has emerged as a
dominant paradigm in the field of marketing. This paper
explores customers' perspectives on the concept of relationship
marketing. It attempts to understand the customers' perspective
on their relationship with financial service provider. It
studies the customers' motivations behind engaging themselves
in a relationship, and the factors which influence them
in this regard. These motivations and factors should be
taken into consideration by a financial service provider,
while formulating relationship marketing strategies.
The financial service industry is undergoing a period of
dynamic change. For a long time, financial service providers
had presumed that their operations were customer-centric,
simply because they had customers. They ruled the roost
as most of them were able to generate profits. However,
in the current era of hypercompetition, very slight difference
exists in the services provided by the major players in
this industry. In such a scenario, as the boundaries between
the offerings of major players in the financial service
industry are becoming increasingly blurred, a customer is
unlikely to be overly impressed by the core attributes of
financial service. Hence, it is imperative that financial
service providers wake up to this reality and re-focus on
their core asset—the customer. As competitive activity
increases, together with increasingly demanding customers,
the financial service providers have to focus on certain
critical issues related to their consumers, which are fundamental
to their success. More than ever before, they now need to
have a detailed understanding of their customers, especially
with respect to their needs and demands. They have to determine
ways to successfully meet the above through an appropriate
range of financial services in order to prevent their customers
from switching over to the other service providers. Any
approach that can help them address these issues is likely
to meet with a great deal of success. Relationship marketing
is viewed as an effective tool in this regard.
|
