A Case Study Of Barclays Bank Marketing Essay

Marketing is the process of planning and executing the developing, pricing, promotion and distribution of good and services to satisfy individuals needs and organisational goals.

This simply means that marketing deals with general public by identifying their needs and wants through the research process to anticipate the future to make such a product that satisfies the required needs and generate reasonable profit for the organisation.

During the past banking era their was no need of marketing strategies which include creativity, innovation, customer relations, public relations, promotions and marketing research. Businesses operates in such a market where little or no attempt was made to care much about customers needs, however products are sold as a result of less availability of substitute goods.

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But in the recent years banking industry has been evolved by the intense competition, due to the deregulation in the financial system of the economies. Banks realised the role of marketing in understanding needs of individuals and provision of the services accordingly. In today’s competitive world where every one wants to get value for their hard earned money Banks has recognised that marketing is the only tool towards the sustainable life of banking system. Keeping in mind the customers sovereignty more attention has now been given to the consumers. This situation creates more need for adopting various marketing strategies to satisfy customers.

To create a good impression with the use of marketing strategies, variety of promotional activities have to be inculcated in banking system, to get customers attention, to prompt advertisement and public relations to induce the interest of the public.

Generally provided services by the banks to the customers are in the form of depositing money and then subsequent credit to the customer’s account, provision of loans, factoring services to companies, overdraft facilities and advances to the clients.

In conclusion, now banks have to do more emphasis on marketing strategies in Oder to fulfil their obligations towards, customers, public, shareholders, stakeholders, employees, and the whole nation in general.

PART 1 – Project objectives and overall research approach

Background of the Company:

Barclays is one of the major and world wide famous global financial service providers, founded in 1690, headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Its is a universal bank which is engaged in retail and commercial banking, debit cards, credit cards, investment banking, investment and wealth management, and corporate banking etc with more then 300 years expertise in banking Barclays have extensive existence in more then 50 territories including Europe, Asia, America and Africa and have more the 48 million customers.

In 2008 Barclays has signed an agreement to purchase the investment-banking and trade divisions of Lehman Brothers, a United States financial Institute who got bankrupt. In that deal Barclays acquired the headquarter building of Lehman Brothers bases in New York.

Reports show that in 2009 the UK government offered to inject £40 billion (US$69 billion) into three banks including Barclays, which may look for over £7 billion. Barclays later confirmed that it refused that offer and raised £6.5 billion of new resources (£2 billion by annulment of dividend and £4.5 billion from private investors).

Barclays has developed very advanced and extremely diverse portfolio of financial services in the provision of services to customers in managing their money in such a way that benefits them most. Barclays’ bank operates within two business ‘clusters’: Corporate and Investment Banking and Wealth and Investment Management; and Retail and Business Banking.

An overview of financial services provided by Barclays bank includes:

World wide banking

Barclays card

Barclays Capital

Barclays Wealth

Retail banking and commercial banking

Global Investors

Strategic Overview of Barclays:

The ambition of Barclays bank is to become the leading global financial service provider of all universal banks. By this statement means providing a wide range of retail and commercial services to consumers throughout the world.

Barclays Strategies follows a simple principle: fulfilling needs of its customers, by providing excellent customer service and helping them in achieving their goals.

Barclays bank has a clear overview of the growth sources in financial service industry, to align them in terms of capability to capture the opportunities arose from the investment trends.

Organisational Structure of Barclays:

Sir David Walker is the Group Chairman who joined the board in 2012, and Antony Jenkins is the Group Chief Executive since 2009.

The topic selected and its context:

The topic selected for the Research and Analysis Project is about the “marketing strategies of an organisation and its effectiveness.”

Barclays bank has been chosen for the Research and Analysis Project in the context of An evaluative report on Barclays bank to overview its marketing strategies and in depth analysis of their effectiveness.

Reasons for selecting this topic:

Marketing concept is the business philosophy that states that customers want and satisfaction is the economic and social justification for a firm’s existence. Once a service has been offered with specific distinctive features customer appeal, the customer is prepared to buy the service/product and switch from other providers to the one with the appeal. By focusing on that philosophy following are the reasons of selecting this topic.

As an student I get the opportunity to explore more about the marketing strategies of world re-known organisation especially while studying the topic in preparing towards exam, where this topic was briefly discussed

I have sufficient knowledge to determine the business strategies used and figure out its effectiveness in the growth and profitability of the organisation. Instead of this point can we add below point Can we say

My studies in the areas of Accounting and Finance and business and management work experience advantaged me with good business and management knowledge which certainly help me to devise business strategies and evaluate their contribution towards the growth and profitability of the organisation however the research will develop my knowledge and understanding about the use and effectiveness of marketing strategies in the perspective of financial institutions which are normally not associated with marketing area.

The marketing strategy of an organisation and its effectiveness is not only the vital part of syllabus, but also advocates the organisation to satisfy customers needs rather then to persuade the customer to buy what they provide. (Link Marketing and Finance such as Marketing attract customers and make sales happen which eventually generates finance therefore Being in the area of Accounting and Finance it is important to have good knowledge about Marketing in order to manage and predict companies financial position accurately. ) Adopt the red highlighted area if you consider it appropriate.

To evaluate the marketing strategies of an organisation and measuring its effectiveness, both business and financial analysis are very important.

Financial analysis only tells how a business is doing and its financial position and business analysis explains the business’s strategy about how the business has gained such a financial position. So the combination of both analyses is the best way to analyse the business’s position.

1.3 Project objectives

To analyse the marketing strategies of Barclays bank and forming an in-depth discussion of how these are directly related to the revenue, profits, customers satisfaction, losses, controvercies, cash balances, and stock prices of Barclays plc.

To evaluate the factor s that lead to the direct effect on growth rate of the Barclays plc.

To ascertain the macroeconomic as well as microeconomic factors those affect the financial performance of Barclays plc.

To understand the global trends and fashions adopted in the industry as well as viewing the Barclays as playing a key role in global aviation industry.

Observation of the effects of modern technology on the performance of Barclays on financial and economic grounds.

1.4 Question Selected for Research:

In the history of banks failure and as a result it’s impact on the overall economy are the reasons why banks are unable to fulfil their obligations towards their employees, customers, shareholders and stakeholders.

Financial service industry has lost the confidence reposed on them by the customers because of the incompetent service, impersonal treatment and inability to satisfy the effective demand of the community for bank services. All these result in customer’s dissatisfaction and disgust.

In reaction, the success of the financial service industry depends largely on the application of marketing techniques in their day to day operations in meeting the challenge of competitive business environment.

Since competition was more or less unknown in the immediate past banking era there was a little or no need for marketing strategies which include innovation into consumers needs and wants through marketing research, new service development, public relations and sales promotions.

Banks then concentrated mainly on the advertising as their only marketing strategy.

In pursuing this research endeavour, the researcher has focused on the marketing strategies which play an important role in competing in the market place to adopt the marketing concept towards achieving aims and objectives of Barclays plc.

1.5 Rationale of the Research

With the help of this research, the researcher tried to explore the strategies that lie within the organisation. By focussing on the Barclays plc, the researcher has tried to bring out the benefits of marketing techniques adopted which helped them being one of the re known bank of the world. Thus, this research can really prove to be beneficial as it has highlighted the effectiveness in terms of customer satisfaction towards Barclays plc.

1.6 Methodology used for Research:

An organized effort ensures profiting results. Therefore, a well-planned and organized research effort promises worthwhile outcomes.

Research Methodology is basically “…the manner in which we attempt to solve problems in a systematic effort to push back the frontier of human ignorance or to confirm the validity of the solutions to problems others have presumably resolved” (Leedy, 1985). This gets the researchers involved into the decisions of the technical and practical considerations regarding the particular research endeavour. Mouton and Marais (1988) regards it “…the logic of the application of scientific methods to the investigation of phenomenon…the logic of the decision making process in scientific research”. In short, the research methodology is a decisive outline of the intended study, its philosophy, design or, the techniques and the tools that are to be used to collect and analyse the primary data, the sampling from the population, and the contemplation for the reliability, validity and ethical considerations. It also includes how the researcher is going to present the data in the easily comprehendible manner. All these things compliment the research topic chosen and opted for (Goddard, 2004).

It is the concern for the researcher to get an effective and reliable data for research work. In this regards both primary data and secondary data has been used.

It was observed by the researcher that only single method employed may not be enough for res I used various methods to collect data and information which was required for the research project. The worthiest way was the meeting with the financial director which answered most of my research questions to achieve the research objective and it also helped me to understand the business objective of the company. I did a lot of search through internet search engines to analyze and interpret my research questions and without this I wouldn’t have been able to achieve my objective.

Comment: This section informs what research methodology is but does not tell us what methodology has been adopted whether research will be carried out through quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods. Please specify that you justify why a particular methodology will be adopted.

PART 2 – Information gathering and accounting/business techniques

For the information gathering different approached has been used for the research and analysis project: see my comment highlighted in blue in 2.2.

Internet is one of the main secondary sources of quick information and research, which has been widely, is used in doing this project. It took considerable time to separate the related data from the information available. I also used the company’s website for collection of information where most of information was available. Further information was also collected regarding marketing policies and strategies, ethical issues and their impact on the business and economy.

ACCA Professional level Manuals, namely P1 (Professional Accountant) and P3 (Business Analysis) also helped in my understanding of ethical issues and their impact on the business.

Conventional library research: soon after choosing the topic for my research and analysis, I started to read relevant reports from different books, in articles published in business magazines and journals and existing reports on the company. All research was carried out in libraries across London such as British Library, City Business Library, and Ilford Central library London, This process enabled me to gather and analyses the information relating to Barclays plc.

Questionnaires for getting the general views and opinions of the general public has been used as primary source of information, which is more reliable as research has put a lot of effort to administer them as accurate as possible to get best outcome, which could justify with the project as well as could be helpful for Barclays in future.

2.2 Methodology used to collect information

Based on the Research and Analysis project objectives of the research primary and secondary data collection techniques, a questionnaire will be formed in order to collect the primary data for this research project.

Comment: This statement should be presented in the beginning of Part 2 of your report above. You have to elaborate the Primary and Secondary sources that what techniques will be applied for primary and secondary data. (Merge this section with above and explain primary and secondary sources separately. You gain need to make sure it links with your chosen research methodology (qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods).

2.3 The limitations of information gathering

Although there was a huge sum of information available about marketing techniques, the objective of researcher was to only gather information related to the service industry. While collecting the data some limitations was considered:

Most of the information researcher has used to produce this repost is collected from the books, questionaries’ and internet

Researcher focused on using of secondary data for project which was conveniently available and reliable but some problems with secondary data included:

Data out of date

Incomplete Data

Format incompatible for peers comparative information

Data inaccessible / not presented in useful form

Sometimes the information about the current marketing techniques which are highly sensitive for any company was not readily available and it appeared to be very difficult to arrange a meeting with the management of company.

At times, some information may have characteristically been overlooked due to human error which may have not resulted in the desired results in information gathering.

Some of the information required specialist knowledge to understand and may be difficult for public to understand.

The management of the most of the organization is reluctant to provide any information which is publicly not available. So I have to rely on the data which is publicly available through different sources.

Another problem with information gathering was that organizations normally never publish information which could have an adverse impact on their image. In view of this, I gathered the information from secondary sources although it may have proved relatively less reliable and fair.

2.4 Ethical issues arose during information gathering and their solutions

Some of the ethical issues arose in information gathering processes are:

I got some of the information from different articles which were published about Barclays plc. The ethical issues to look out for in the articles were any possible examples of potentially misleading advertisements, or complaints of customers.

Most of the information collect and utilized by the researcher used in report is unbiased. Researcher did not get any information or feedback of questions which could have been ethically wrong.

Researcher has tried to get feedback and opinion from the public through questionnaires but some members of the public were reluctant to give their views, although some were not aware of the terminology.

Researcher has tried to gather information from individuals who could have had an influence in the economic forums / discussions / financial industry and marketing managers of financial service providers about marketing strategies; however they appeared to be more concerned about economic wealth and company’s individuality.

Researcher of the project tried to gather some of information from staff members of the company, based at Barclay’s plc. Main branch in, London but that was very hard to approach them regarding the topic chosen for the research and analysis project.

2.5 The accounting/business techniques used and their limitations

I used internet search engines Google search. I found Google search to be a very good tool to get answers from different websites. It returned relevant web results to my search queries and directed me to various websites, newspapers and books. And I also put my questions on Yahoo Answers and got different answers from different panels. This was very useful tool as it helped me a lot on different occasions.

I used MS Excel to create a questionnaire in the form of a check list, and marked relevant boxes with (ƒ-) or (´) depending on my findings. The sheet can be seen in Appendix 1. For this information I visited the company’s websites for both Barclays plc. And read all information which provided answers to the questionnaire prepared in the Excel sheet.

Graphical presentation of data obtained from the questionnaires of the general opinion of the public has been which helped me understand the strategic view point about marketing and customers thinking and approach of banks and financial services. It also indicated how the banks plan to achieve their targets by operational efficiency and new technology.

PART 3 – Results, analysis, conclusions and recommendations

3.1 The United Kingdom Financial System:

It is very difficult to highlight the importance of banks in today’s economic system to have a good relationship between banks and other sectors of the economy. This is because of the crucial role that banks plays in an economy’s financial system.

According to Adam Smith in 1934 “the banking system was one of the key agents in the whole process of development.” Banks speed up the process of economic development by mobilizing the available resource and making more funds for them as well as for economy.

Financial system stability assessment, prepared by the Monetary and Exchange affairs and the European I Departments, Approved by Stefan Ingves Micheal Deppler Feburary 7, 2003.

This financial system stability assessment (FSSA) is based on work of an IMF mission that visited United Kingdom (UK) as part of financial sector assessment programme (FSAP) in February, May and July, 2002. In addition, mission members visited supervisors in New York and Germany to discuss cross border supervision related issues related to the UK, and undertook work related to global market in London during an international Capital Markets Department mission in there March 2002. Follow up discussions on the FSAP findings took place from November 21-27. 2002 in the context of the 2002 Article IV consultation.

Potential risks for the UK banking system arise from both domestic and International sources. Slower than envisaged recovery in global demand or further declines in global equity prices are the major risks for UK banking system.

On the domestic side, high household and corporate debt levels have so far been offset by effects on servicing capacity of low interest’s rates and a relatively mild slowdown in activity in late 2001 and early 2002. However, risk to the financial system could arise from deteriorating domestic economic conditions, rising unemployment, or higher interest rates than currently expected, especially if these are accompanied by significant declines in property prices from their current high levels. These factors also need to be seen against the trend towards some narrowing in profit margins at least among the bigger banks, due in part to continuing competitive pressures, regulatory pressures to limits some service fees, and rising loan loss provisions.

3.2 The Market Concept and Service Marketing:

The growth of services industry is not only because of marketing development but due to economic growth and advanced standards of living. Initially service sector of the economy is not marketing oriented.

Marketing factor has been ignored and lagged behind as compared to the product sector of the economies. And generally been slow in promotional activities, strategies and marketing techniques.

By the research on this project few reasons for the lacking of marketing in service industry could be identified. Services are intangible and hence create difficult marketing challenges for service industry. Services providers such as in banks think themselves as a creator rather than as a marketer of financial services. They emphasise to equate marketing with selling and they fail to consider other part of the marketing system.

Now most of the successful banks adopted advanced marketing strategies in order to achieve their objectives, as from the past experiences it has been noticed that marketing in both sectors is very crucial. Now we can see the established marketing function, and research in marketing and development is emphasised.

3.3 Features of Financial Services:

Specific nature of financial service creates specific marketing challenges and opportunities. These results in strategic marketing programs which are generally different from product marketing. Some of the important features of financial services are:

Intangibility

Heterogeneity

Fluctuating Demand

Inseparability

Barclays Marketing definition is “Marketing stretches you right from the beginning of a marketing process to launch.” (Robin Martin, 2011 Future Leader Marketing and Products)

3.4 Evaluation of services provided by Banks:

Banks are doing lot of effort to attract retail businesses as well as individuals. For the customers continence banks credit cards have been introduced. More advanced and upgraded services such as insurance policies, monthly bills payments methods, personal financial help, 24 hour money withdrawal facilities and e banking have been launched.

Some of the highlighted services of banks for individuals, and business customers are:

Debit cards

Cash dispenser and automated teller machine

Investment management

Safe custody and safe deposit

Finance provision for businesses

Money transfer facilities

Insurance policies

Advisory services.

3.5 Marketing Processes:

As it is obvious that customers are central to the marketing so banks or any financial institutes have to do continuous research to identify and respond to the needs of the customer’s profitability.

In the marketing process starting point is to recognise the individuality and recognising their importance, which they differ from each other and hence their needs and wants are different from each other.

A bank cannot satisfy all needs of the customers, so the second stage in the marketing process is recognising which customers and which needs would be potentially profitable for them.

Marketing is a continuous process and for effective and successful marketing, banks needs to make their purpose clear also strategies they employee to accomplish their objectives.

Bank Marketing Objectives

Bank’s Strengths and Weaknesses Opportunities and ThreatsThe overall marketing process starts with the corporate objectives of the Barclays as illustrated in the figure, in the context of mission statement, as the directional beacon provides the strategies and objectives for the realisation of the objectives.Consedring other aspects of strategic management, the process involves continuous discussion, analysation, evaluation, review feedback and decision to reconcile and harmonize the marketing techniques with corporate objectives from which the marketing objectives derive.

Environmental Analysis

Bank Marketing Organisation

Bank Marketing Strategy

Appraisal

Relocation of Sources

Strategic Planning

3.6 Approach of marketing of financial services:

Developing marketing programme in service industry is very challenging, however as in product marketing management should first define its marketing objectives and its target markets. For that management should develop, design and implement marketing mix strategies to figure out its markets and fulfil marketing goal.

Marketing manager of financial services should understand the component and population and income as they affect the market for the services. They need to determine for each market segment, why customers buy the given services. Market segmentation for the financial services enables the banks to select the potentially most profitable segment, and to concentrate resources on the segment chosen, thus making activity better focussed and less wasteful.

3.7 Planning and Developing Strategies of Services:

In the marketing process of planning and developing new services, management should select appropriate strategies regarding:

What services will be offered.

What will be the length and breadth of the services mix offered?

What needs to be done in the way of service attributes such as customer relations or providing guarantees?

It is impressive to take into account consideration the centrality of the customer and what makes him need the services. Whether corporate or personal, customer’s needs vary and change throughout their lifetime.

Design, audit, producing and developing the service require continuous research and regular review of it features, the use of packaging with other associated services and the trend in the market place. Competitor’s services and their effects similarly require continuous marketing research, as do the changes in the consumer preferences, so that new and modified services can be introduced to meet anticipated changes in demand and consumer requirements.

3.8 Pricing Strategies of services:

Price is very important factor for customer consideration. Subject to regularity constraints, price is relatively flexible element in the market. The elasticity of demand for financial services should influence the price set by the seller.

3.9 Channel of Distribution of Services:

In recent years, some organisations have realised that the characteristics of inseparability is not an insurmountable limitation to a seller’s distribution system. The location of the service seller or the seller’s agent should be conveniently accessible to customers.

Banks have increased their businesses their business by installing 24-hour mechanical tellers and by setting up teller windows for drive in customers. The laudable week

3.10 Customer Relations:

As on the one hand government provides the legislative and regulatory environment, same like on other hand customers provides the market. As suppliers of the stock in trade deposits and consumers of the services, customers constitute the pillar and lifeline for banking. Therefore they make the greatest demand on banks, the most important being getting their money back when they want it and some of the banks money when they need it.

“In the market place customers are broken down into groups with different ideas of what they want. The largest group is the one looking for a low-price, no frills services- but of course low prices often go hand in hand with low profits. The group who are prepared to pay for exceptional quality is small, but probably more profitable for the company. The company has to decide where its own strengths lie in terms of meeting customer expectation, and then decide whether it is able to meet the needs of its chosen target group better than the competition can do it”

(Jim Blythe, Principle & Practice of Marketing, 2005, p-178)

In these different groups of customers, the Barclays plc lies in the group D, which customer are willing to pay more for exceptional quality, because the airline are operating at premium services. Premium customers also want reliability and consistency in the services and like the increased flexibility.

3.11 Statistical Tools Applied in Data Analysis:

Questionnaires as a primary source of information are used in collecting data. In the questionnaires both the open ended and close ended form of questions has been used to control and guide the respondents from deviating unnecessarily from the subject of the research and to prevent them from giving irrelevant views about the subject matter.

The data obtained from the questionnaires is administered and analysed accurately, but to the concern of the researcher is to obtain the desired result from the diverse opinion and multiple suggestions.

Different tools such as tables, charts, pie charts, diagrams and other mathematical and statistical calculations involving averages, ratios, and percentages have been used to analyse and evaluate the data obtained from the questionnaires.

Comments:

Part 3 is a major part and it is very weak.

You mentioned that questionnaire will be used. Then where is the analysis of those questions asked in the questionnaire. That analysis should be presented in this section.

The project is related to accounting therefore you would have presented some factual information through Balance Sheet or Profit and Loss statement and indicate how much expenses organisation is making on Marketing.

It would be good if some rations are used to calculate that the expenditures on marketing is producing some profits for the company. The information can be collected from internet ot other sources etc.

Overall project should be for 60