Marketing Financial Services

1. Identify and review some of the strategies which the company uses to deal with the difficulties presented by the specific features of financial services marketing.

Financial services marketing are quite different from goods marketing. Because of its specific features, sometimes they will make profits for financial services organizations. But sometimes they will also bring difficulties to the organizations.

There are four main features of financial services marketing which are intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability. These are all characteristics distinguish goods and financial services products.

In the following part we will introduce the features of financial services and why they are important to the financial services organizations. Then we will discuss about some of the strategies which the companies used to deal with the difficulties caused by these features.

In Harrison's (2000) word, 'the most fundamental difference between services and goods cited in the literature is that of intangibility; essentially it is argued that services posses no physical dimension.' But not all the services are intangibility, neither or all the goods are tangibility (Harrison, 2000). Intangibility would cause difficulties in financial services marketing. The customers may not know what they are going to buy, because of the financial services product cannot be seen or touched. This makes it more difficult to market financial services products than physical goods.

Inseparability

According to Zeithaml and Bitner (2003), 'Whereas most goods are produced first, then sold and consumed, most services are sold first and then produced and consumed simultaneously.' This definitely causes difficulties to the financial services marketing.

Heterogeneity

As service performances, are in general, produced by human beings no two services will ever be precisely alike.

Perishability

As Harrison (2000) said 'perishability describes the real-time nature of the product which occurs as a result of simultaneous production and consumption'. It means services cannot be stored, their unused capacity cannot be reserved and they cannot be inventoried.

The features of financial services marketing have significant influences on the organizations. They sometimes make the consumers hard to decide and choose which financial service to buy. And these features even make the organizations difficult to market their products.

To deal with the difficulties present by intangibility Ennew and Waite (2007) suggested four strategies which are: (1) provide physical evidence so that the customers could see and identify the services which is being providing. (2) Place particular