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Keywords
Relationship marketing, Selling, Banking
Abstract
While the concept of relationship marketing has attracted increasing academic and practitioner attention in recent years, issues relating to the practical and context specific implementation of relationship marketing cultures have been less well developed. Indeed, recent literature points up the many difficulties associated with the implementation of relationship marketing. This paper addresses a number of key issues associated with the implementation of a relationship culture in the context of a leading and long established retail banking institution. Specifically, the form which such a culture should take is discussed, together with a critical review of how successful the case bank has been in its establishment. In light of this analysis a conceptual model is proposed for the development of relationship cultures within the banking industry.
Introduction
In a previous paper the authors reported the first stage results of a study into the relative success of a leading retail banking institution in introducing a relationship oriented selling culture (Durkin and Bennett, 1999; Bennett and Durkin, 2000). Specifically, this study reported on the effects which the change process to date has had on employee commitment within the bank. It was found that the diet of change thus far presented had resulted in the at least partial dissolution of internalised commitment (that predicated on shared values between the individual employee and the organisation) across all grades of employees, and irrespective of service duration.
Simultaneously, employees across all grades were found to be displaying higher than expected levels of compliance commitment (that based on economic exchange). The conclusion reached was that the fundamental changes which have occurred to the organisation's systems and processes have severely undermined the extent to which values are shared between the employees and the organisation (the basis of internalised commitment), and that this holds serious implications both for current performance and the likely success of further attempts at organisational change.
In the context of the case bank, however, further change initiatives are planned as part of the bank's move towards a relationship oriented selling culture. By no means unique to the case bank, this transition process can be found in many banks throughout the industry and involves the proactive management of customer relationships in order to...