• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.111-133
• /
• 2010

Marketing financial services used to be easier. Today, the competition in financial services is fierce. Not only has the competition become more intense, financial services have also changed structurally. In an environment with various customer needs and severe competitions, the marketing in financial services industry is getting more difficult and more important than before. However, there are still not enough studies on financial services marketing in Korea whereas lots of research papers have been published frequently in some international journals. The purpose of this paper is (1)to review the literature on financial services marketing, (2)to investigate current marketing activities based on in-depth interview with financial marketing managers in Korea, and (3)to suggest some implications for future research on the financial services marketing. Financial products are not consumer products. In fact, they are not products at all in the way product marketing is usually described. Nor are they altogether like services. The financial industry operates in a unique way, and its marketing tasks are correspondingly complex. However, the literature review shows that there has been a lack of basic studies which dealt with inherent characteristics of financial services marketing compared to the research on marketing in other industries. Many studies in domestic marketing journals have so far focused only on the general customer behaviors and the special issues in some financial industries. However, for more effective financial services marketing, we have to answer following questions. Is there any difference between financial service marketing and consumer packaged goods marketing? What are the differences between the financial services marketing and other services marketing such as education and health services? Are there different ways of marketing among banks, securities firms, insurance firms, and credit card companies? In other words, we need more detailed research as well as basic studies about the financial services marketing. For example, we need concrete definitions of financial services marketing, bank marketing, securities firm marketing, and etc. It is also required to compare the characteristics of each marketing within the financial services industry. The products sold in each market have different characteristics such as duration and degree of risk-taking. It means that there are sub-categories in financial services marketing. We have to consider them in the future research on the financial services marketing. It is also necessary to study customer decision making process in the financial markets. There have been little research on how customers search and process information, compare alternatives, make final decision, and repeat their choices. Because financial services have some unique characteristics, we need different understandings in the customer behaviors compared to the behaviors in other service markets. And also considering the rapid growth in financial markets and upcoming severe competition between domestic and global financial companies, it is time to start more systematic and detailed research on financial services marketing in Korea. In the second part of this paper, I analyzed the results of in-depth interview with 20 marketing managers of financial services companies in Korea. As a result, I found that the role of marketing departments in Korean financial companies are mainly focused on the short-term activities such as sales support, promotion, and CRM data analysis although the size and history of marketing departments to some extent show a sign of maturity. Most companies established official marketing departments before 2001. Average number of employees in a marketing department is about 58. However, marketing managers in eight companies(40% of the sample) still think that the purpose of marketing is only to support and manage general sales activities. It shows that some companies have sales-oriented concept rather than marketing-oriented concept. I also found three key words which marketing managers think importantly in financial services markets. They are (1)Trust in customer relationship, (2)Brand differentiation, and (3)Rapid response to customer needs. 50% of the sample support that "Trust" is the most important key word in the financial services marketing. It is interesting that 80% of banks and securities companies think that "Trust" is the most important thing, whereas managers in credit card companies consider "Rapid response to customer needs" as the most important key word in their market. In addition, there are different problems recognition of marketing managers depending on the types of financial industries they belong to. For example, in the case of banks and insurance companies, marketing managers consider "a lack of communication with other departments" as the most serious problem. On the other hand, in the case of securities firms, "a lack of utilization of customer data" is the most serious problem. These results imply that there are different important factors for the customer satisfaction depending on the types of financial industries, and managers have to consider them when marketing financial products in more effective ways. For example, It will be necessary for marketing managers to study different important factors which affect customer satisfaction, repeat purchase, degree of risk-taking, and possibility of cross-selling according to the types of financial industries. I also suggested six hypothetical propositions for the future research.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.171-184
• /
• 2015

Nowadays, mobile commerce is having an increasingly profound impact on our daily lives, and offer interesting and advantageous new services. Mobile payment is an emerging and important application of mobile commerce in smart work, enabling users to use their mobile devices (especially mobile phones) for paying goods and services wherever they go. The appearance of m-payment is expected to provide us a convenient and bright future to enjoy. That is the common trend on over the world, but in Vietnam, although the number of smart phone users has been increasing rapidly, the adoption of m-payment system still didn't succeed completely. The research reviewed literature regarding mobile payment services, analyzed the impact of customer characteristics and system characteristics on m-payment adoption in Vietnam. To analyze the adoption behaviors of m-payment users, m-payment research model which consists of three customer-characteristics (m-payment trust, personal innovativeness, m-payment knowledge) and four m-payment system characteristics (mobility, reachability, convenience, compatibility) were studied. The results indicate that perceived usefulness, trust, and compatibility are the important predictors to the intention to use m-payment. This study will assist m-payment services suppliers in implementing appropriate business models and service strategies to successfully attract customer to use m-payment in Vietnam, allowing managers to exert appropriate investment, time, and effort for m-payment system development in designing smart working.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.85-107
• /
• 2020

The Internet of Things market, a technology that connects the Internet to various things, is growing day by day. Besides, various smart home services using IoT and AI (Artificial Intelligence) are being launched in homes. Related to this, existing smart home-related studies focus primarily on ICT technology, not on what service improvements should be made in customer positions. In this study, we will use smart home application customer review data to classify functional and design elements of smart home usability value and examine the ways customers think of service improvement. For this, LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics" Smart Home application, the main provider of Smart Home in Korea, customer reviews were crawled to conduct a comparative analysis between them. In this study, the review of IoT home-applications was analyzed to find service improvement insights from customer perspective, and related analysis of text mining, social network analysis and Doc2vec was used to efficiently analyze data equivalent to about 16,000 user reviews. Through this research, we hope that related companies effectively seek ways to improve smart home services that reflect customer needs and are expected to help them establish competitive strategies by identifying weaknesses and strengths among competitors.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
• /
• 1998.10a
• /
• pp.245-248
• /
• 1998

In this paper, as a forecasting method, the market survey for forecasting demand is introduced for the estimation of subscriber line demand in the optical access networks. The market survey method for the new multimedia services is attempted to collect information directly from customers using the questionnaires for home-users and business-users in local loops. Analysis rationale of questionnaires is suggested to estimate the number of subscriber lines. Also, two measures are presented to quantify the credibility on survey responses; one is the probability that the customer will use the multimedia services and the other is the rate that the subscriber line demand will be actually realized. The former measure is calculated based on the information on customers and the Logit analysis. The latter is obtained by the degree of customer's knowledge about specific services and the customer's willingness to use the services. Based on the values of two measures, the number of subscriber line demand can be developed for installing the optical access networks.

• Information Systems Review
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.29-48
• /
• 2015

This study proposes an integrated operational model of branches with customer center at stock brokerage firms and suggests ways to improve existing systems. This suggested integrated model of branches and customer centers can increase customer satisfaction and customer values for the specific services at each channel. This integrated model also enables customers to make transactions at a desired specific time, make it possible to inquire whatever the customer wished to ask, and select desired contact channels. In addition, the firms can bring in improved effectiveness of internal resources by integrating all the resources the firm has. Personal resources and system resources are distributed by the characteristics of channels that can be selected by the customers. Then agents also can provide more speedy and accurate responses to the engaged customer interactions matching to his/her job in charge. Also, the model makes it possible to collect the latest customer and transaction information at the moment of each interactions, by which the firm can provide customized services specifically tailed to each customers' preferences. However, systematic interactions between branches and customer center, and completed system should be equipped with in order to provide the highest quality services.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.1-23
• /
• 2008

As managing customer relationship gets more important, companies are strengthening information service using multi-channels to their customers as a part of their customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives. It means companies are now accepting such information services not as simple information -delivering tools, but as strategic initiatives for acquiring and maintaining customer loyalty. In this paper, we attempt to validate whether or not such various information services would impact on organizational performance in terms of CRM strategy. More specifically, our research objective is to answer the next three questions: first, how to construct the instruments to measure not information quality but information service quality?; second, which attributes of information service quality can influence corporate image and customer loyalty?; finally, does each information service type have unique characteristics compared with others in terms of influencing corporate image and customer loyalty? With respect to providing answers to those questions, the previous studies had been limited in that those studies failed to consider the variety of types of information service or restricted the quality of information service to information quality. An appropriate research model answering the above questions should consider the fact that most companies are utilizing multi channels for their information services, and include the recent strategic information service such as customer online community. Moreover, since corporate information service could be regarded as a type of products or services delivered to customer, it is necessary to adopt the criteria for assessing customer's perceived value when to measure the quality of information service. Therefore, considering both multi-channels and multi-traits may enable us to tell the detailed causal routes showing which quality attributes of which information service would affect corporate image and customer loyalty. As information service channels, we include not only homepage and DM (direct mail), which are the most frequently applied information service channels, but also online community, which is getting more strategic importance in recent years. With respect to information service quality, we abstract information quality, convenience of information service, and timeliness of information service through a wide range of relevant literature reviews. As our dependant variables, we consider corporate image and customer loyalty that both of them are the critical determinants of organizational performance, and also attempt to grasp the relationship between the two constructs. We conducted a huge online survey at the homepage of one of representative dairy companies in Korea, and gathered 367 valid samples from 407 customers. The reliability and validity of our measurements were tested by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and principal factor analysis respectively, and seven hypotheses were tested through performing correlation test and multiple regression analysis. The results from data analysis demonstrated that timeliness and convenience of homepage have positive effects on both corporate image and customer loyalty. In terms of DM, its' information quality was represented to influence both corporate image and customer loyalty, but we found its' convenience have a positive effect only on corporate image. With respect to online community, we found its timeliness contribute significantly both to corporate image and customer loyalty. Finally, as we expected, corporate image was revealed to provide a great influence to customer loyalty. This paper provides several academic and practical implications. Firstly, we think our research reinforces CRM literatures by developing the instruments for measuring information service quality. The previous relevant studies have mainly depended on the measurements of information quality or service quality which were developed independently. Secondly, the fact that we conducted our research in a real situation may enable academics and practitioners to understand the effects of information services more clearly. Finally, since our study involved three different types of information service which are most frequently applied in recent years, the results from our study might provide operational guidelines to the companies that are delivering their customers information by multi-channel. In other words, since we found that, in terms of customer loyalty, the key areas would be different from each other according to the types of information services, our analysis would help to make decisions such as selecting strengthening points or allocating resources by information service channels.

• The Journal of Information Systems
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.197-226
• /
• 2005

Recently, internet as well as internet banking are growing rapidly. Most banks in Korea provide internet banking services for customers. Internet banking became a major trend in the financial marketplace. There are a few empirical research in this area. Although quality of internet banking service is an important concept, there is a lack of theory-based empirical research in this area. Therefore, this paper is aimed at finding whether service quality of internet banking influence customer satisfaction, and whether characteristic of internet banking user influence relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality of internet banking. Furthermore, this paper identify whether customer satisfaction influence customer loyalty. The research model proposed thirteen hypothesis and tested empirically. A total of 269 responses were received from internet banking users and analyzed. The analyses showed partial support for the affirmative effect of customer satisfaction and characteristic of internet banking user. But the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is significant. Implications of these findings are that internet banking sites should concentrate on providing a high quality of banking services; information, trust, ease of use, and security of system and thereby strengthen customer loyalty.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.209-218
• /
• 2008

The growth in services has focused issues of service quality both for commercial enterprises and across a range of public services and government institutions. The education sector, in particular, has undergone radical change to meet the needs of its varied constituents. This paper examines key issues in internal service, customer satisfaction, service quality, relational commitment as they apply in one particular education sector. The purpose of this study is to analyze effect of internal service on customer satisfaction, educational service quality. First, In the dimension of internal service, many factors affect internal customer's evaluation for overall satisfaction. They are categorized as five factors; tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy. The results of this study supported the proposed conceptual framework overall. Therefore, we identified that internal service quality is the antecedent of an internal customer satisfaction, and the consequent variables of an internal customer satisfaction are educational service quality, external customer satisfaction. The major findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, some factors(tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy) affected positively internal customer satisfaction. Second, external service quality affected positively educational service quality, external satisfaction. In other words, the more internal customers have experienced internal service, the higher internal service quality deliver educational service quality.

• 한국경영정보학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2008.06a
• /
• pp.114-120
• /
• 2008

While ubiquitous healthcare (u-health) services were expected to propagate along with conventional healthcare services, recent progress indicated rather limited market acceptance. In this paper, we investigated the fundamental causes of why the consumer acceptance level of u-health services has been low. We draw upon innovation adoption theories to analyze the consumer readiness of the typical u-health services. The comparative analysis between innovative u-health services and conventional services was performed using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Subsequently, policy and business implications including technological breakthrough insights were discussed based on the customer perspective comparative adoption analysis. The propositions captured through this study provide useful insight to further studies on u-health services.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.95-108
• /
• 2011

TThis is a study of the personalization method that intelligently adapts the level of clustering considering purchasing index of a customer. In the e-biz era, many companies gather customers' demographic and transactional information such as age, gender, purchasing date and product category. They use this information to predict customer's preferences or purchasing patterns so that they can provide more customized services to their customers. The previous Customer-Segmentation method provides customized services for each customer group. This method clusters a whole customer set into different groups based on their similarity and builds predictive models for the resulting groups. Thus, it can manage the number of predictive models and also provide more data for the customers who do not have enough data to build a good predictive model by using the data of other similar customers. However, this method often fails to provide highly personalized services to each customer, which is especially important to VIP customers. Furthermore, it clusters the customers who already have a considerable amount of data as well as the customers who only have small amount of data, which causes to increase computational cost unnecessarily without significant performance improvement. The other conventional method called 1-to-1 method provides more customized services than the Customer-Segmentation method for each individual customer since the predictive model are built using only the data for the individual customer. This method not only provides highly personalized services but also builds a relatively simple and less costly model that satisfies with each customer. However, the 1-to-1 method has a limitation that it does not produce a good predictive model when a customer has only a few numbers of data. In other words, if a customer has insufficient number of transactional data then the performance rate of this method deteriorate. In order to overcome the limitations of these two conventional methods, we suggested the new method called Intelligent Customer Segmentation method that provides adaptive personalized services according to the customer's purchasing index. The suggested method clusters customers according to their purchasing index, so that the prediction for the less purchasing customers are based on the data in more intensively clustered groups, and for the VIP customers, who already have a considerable amount of data, clustered to a much lesser extent or not clustered at all. The main idea of this method is that applying clustering technique when the number of transactional data of the target customer is less than the predefined criterion data size. In order to find this criterion number, we suggest the algorithm called sliding window correlation analysis in this study. The algorithm purposes to find the transactional data size that the performance of the 1-to-1 method is radically decreased due to the data sparity. After finding this criterion data size, we apply the conventional 1-to-1 method for the customers who have more data than the criterion and apply clustering technique who have less than this amount until they can use at least the predefined criterion amount of data for model building processes. We apply the two conventional methods and the newly suggested method to Neilsen's beverage purchasing data to predict the purchasing amounts of the customers and the purchasing categories. We use two data mining techniques (Support Vector Machine and Linear Regression) and two types of performance measures (MAE and RMSE) in order to predict two dependent variables as aforementioned. The results show that the suggested Intelligent Customer Segmentation method can outperform the conventional 1-to-1 method in many cases and produces the same level of performances compare with the Customer-Segmentation method spending much less computational cost.