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Changes in the financial services sector, brought about by new legislation and increased competition, have led to many institutions turning to marketing as a means of adjustment. Building societies, in particular, have been placed in a situation where the development of marketing is crucial to corporate performance. In this scenario, marketing information systems should serve to underpin and strengthen the marketing concept in its implementation phase. Suggests, via empirical evidence, that current strategies deployed by smaller building societies for the development of marketing information systems may actually fall short in terms of marketing intelligence.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the theory and practice of financial services marketing in sub-Saharan Africa (sSA) by investigating how financial service providers are developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, in particular, seeking to uncover the involvement of stakeholders.

Following an interpretivist approach, the study uncovers fresh and context-rich insights through an analysis of a multiple case study consisting of retail banks in Ghana. Data consist of semi-structured interviews with senior managers and analysis of documents and archives.

The study uncovers three key CSR practices practised by the retail banks: giving, community and corporate reputation/brand with which their stakeholders are only to some extent involved. Banks not as yet drawing extensively on stakeholder resources for CSR practices.

The study uses an inductive and in-depth approach to explore contextual insights into CSR, but with subsequent limitations on how far the findings can be extended.

The study offers outline for financial services marketing involving stakeholders in CSR.

It discovers that banks acquire social capital through their CSR activities in the community.

The study contributes to financial services marketing theory and practice through an evidence-based framework uncovering the development of CSR through practices that as yet draw on stakeholder resources to a limited extent. Research suggests that CSR practices are dynamic and subject to a range of situational conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to extend understanding of marketing in MENA by investigating how women entrepreneurs use social networking sites (SNS) in marketing their businesses in Lebanon.

To address contextual issues arising from research in this region, this study consists of a two-phase research design of, first, a panel of specialised business commentators and, second, digital qualitative data collection that enabled access to hard to reach informants.

The study reveals that the activities of women entrepreneurs are fundamentally enabled by SNS as it allows them to optimise their networks in prospecting, communicating and developing relationships with stakeholders. It also allows them to support the social fabric of the family unit by providing an extra source of income and facilitating connections.

This study draws on a single country within the MENA region; nonetheless, the analysis offers new and nuanced understanding to marketing of small businesses in uncovering how Lebanese women entrepreneurs are able to build and run their businesses using SNS.

This research demonstrates how women entrepreneurs can set up and run businesses using SNS to reach and extend their networks in a culturally diverse and growing economy. SNS provides an inclusive platform through which women build and run a small business.

This research responds to a World Development aim of studying the relationships between gender and trade such as women entrepreneurs using social technologies.

This research responds to a World Development aim of studying the relationships between gender and trade, here by investigating how women entrepreneurs set up and run small businesses enabled by SNS.

Building on crisis management studies, this study aims to advance research on brand recovery from the existing focus on product brand/customer dyad into stakeholder marketing and corporate branding.

This study uses a single case of industry-dominant corporate brand in an enriched context through in-depth analysis of industry informant and secondary data.

The paper uncovers detail of corporate brand and stakeholder interactions directed towards recovering corporate brand and restoring trust in the industry.

This study offers an evidence-based framework of stakeholder interactions designed to support corporate brand recovery (CBR). The rich data are bounded within a single case.

Framework illustrates the importance of drawing on stakeholders in CBR, particularly in an industry crisis, emphasises trust restoration and reveals the peripheral role of customers in CBR.

This study points to significance of stakeholder networks, particularly in insurance and financial services, in addressing social and ethical issues related to corporate misdeeds is identified.

This study makes noteworthy contribution to brand recovery research in two ways: firstly, by investigating the recovery of brands at corporate level and, secondly, by detailing the interactions between corporate brand and industry stakeholders in recovering the brand within a stricken industry.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate marketing practices in professional service firms (PSFs). PSFs' marketing practices are not well understood, despite their increasing importance to economies worldwide and recognition of their unique characteristics and the marketing challenges they face. The study also examined whether PSF performance outcomes is better modeled through a competency approach suggested by the resource‐based view, or through the extent of use (practices) approach.

Empirical data were collected from professional service providers through an online survey of senior professional service providers across a range of services, including law, engineering, accounting and finance and management consultancy.

Results show interaction marketing was the most common PSF practice and the combination of extent of use and competency, rather than extent of use alone, is a better predictor of firm performance. The results also demonstrate the relevance of the plurality of practices.

The study shows that transaction marketing and database marketing are particularly necessary for financial and market performance, while both interaction marketing and database marketing particularly underpin customer performance. All practices need to be conducted extensively and well for optimum outcomes. The study is cross‐sectional in nature and does not enable a judgment about causal inferences; rather, relationships between constructs are presented.

Professional service providers should focus on competency of practice, as well as extent of practice. However, not all professional service providers do this. Importantly, having a customer service focus is not sufficient to achieve positive market and financial outcomes.

The results presented in the paper have important implications for researchers when modeling and measuring marketing practices and for professional service managers when undertaking marketing activities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine minor service failures in UK banking and consider the impact that satisfaction with service recovery has on customer intentions to continue their custom and make recommendations, used as measures of loyalty behaviours.

Data were gathered on customer satisfaction with service recovery attempts, intended loyalty behaviours and the sources of service failures were gathered by means of an on‐line survey from approximately 2,000 respondents.

Few customers who complained about minor service failures report that they were very satisfied with the service recovery. Weak service recovery influenced customer intentions about continued custom and recommendation. Minor failures in account management and bank charges are shown to have a marked effect on intended loyalty behaviours.

This paper reports the work of a short, e‐mail survey, gathering frequency data from customers of UK banks and reports the impact of service recovery on customer intentions rather than their actions. Further investigation is needed using more a more sophisticated instrument.

In this paper low levels of satisfaction with managing service recoveries are reported, no matter which channel the customer used, no matter how the service failure is managed.

The preliminary work in this paper demonstrates the impact that weak service recovery of minor complaints has on customers' intended loyalty behaviours in UK banking.

The purpose of this paper is to examine multiple channels in retail banking and demonstrate how qualitative market research investigations can inform strategic decision making. Research into customer acquisition and retention has only recently begun to consider them as part of a single marketing process Inviting exploratory qualitative expert investigation.

A review of the literature suggested an outline guide for interviewing a selection of expert informants, from a variety of high‐street banks and building societies. The interview data were analysed using both computer‐aided and manual techniques in parallel as part of strengthening the findings.

The analysis of the interview data suggest five themes of that make up the management of channels in UK high‐street banks that have an impact on customer acquisition and retention and which are as follows: customer groups, interaction style, relationship and loyalty, networks and service and satisfaction.

The themes identified in this preliminary investigation provide a model that maps five aspects that underpin customer acquisition and retention in traditional high‐street banks including for the purposes of this research, building societies in the UK.

Postmodern conditions and re‐evaluations of marketing theory are prompting a re‐consideration of marketing strategies and methodologies. This paper is concerned with research issues arising from these changes and uses the case of retailing financial services as an illustration. Groups of financial services customers, once assumed to be homogeneous, are proving to have individualised needs and are resisting conventional segmentation techniques. Behavioural consistency and orderliness are giving way to fragmentation and market instability in what is described as the postmodern era. Financial service retailers, structured, formalised and risk averse, may find that their preference for uniformity inhibits their ability to serve with diverse, evolving markets. A research agenda is proposed based on a juxtaposition of postmodern considerations and financial services retailing incorporating recent contributions to marketing thought.

This paper reports the findings of a survey of staff perceptions on how customers are being retained in two traditional financial service retailers. In spite of a frequent acknowledgement that customer retention (CR) is a critical business objective, there is limited literature on how customers are actually being retained by organisations. A theoretical framework of managing customer retention is developed to form the basis for a 34‐item questionnaire, which was administered to two independent probability samples of staff working in two large retail financial service retailers. The study finds that these financial service retailers are aiming to retain customers through building relationships but that systems, strategies and structures may reflect transactional exchange.

The management of the enhancement of the quality of service delivery is often primarily focused on minimising negative responses to product offerings, rather than maximising positive responses. To date there has been little debate on the negative aspects of quality. This paper reviews the origins and use of the concepts dissatisfaction, dissonance, disconfirmation and disaffection which are variously explored in a diverse collection of literature spanning service quality, the service experience and marketing. A framework is proposed that places these four concepts on a grid on the basis of whether the term applies to one incident, or many, and the action that is likely to be taken by customers as a result of experiencing each of these. This grid can be used to better understand the relationship between the various approaches that are used to provide organisations with feedback on customer perceptions of their service quality, such as complaints procedures, surveys, suggestion boxes, focus groups and representation and consultation.