Citibank Internet Banking Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Citibank Internet Banking - Assignment Example banks could honestly claim that Internet banking is, at last, contributing to the bottom line (Johnson, 2006). In this age when a few seconds delay is much too long, why did it take rich banks this long to do it right Which brings us to our key question: are banks finally doing the "right" things "right" Our experiment called for an evaluation of how basic marketing principles and the Internet were combined to produce a successful Internet Banking customer experience. Our findings will show if Citibank U.K. have done their homework, matching strategic vision with real customer needs. In the case of internet banking, this involves the attainment of near-frictionless commerce, allowing customers to connect to the bank and do business anytime and from anywhere, with speed and convenience, and hopefully with each transaction generating value for the customer and a tidy profit for the bank. White and Nteli (2004) in their article's title asked an embarrassing question: some ten years after the hype began, "why are there not enough customers" The estimated millions of customers and the billions in profits were not there. Since then, studies by Datamonitor (2004) and Deutsche Bank (2006) showed that of the U.K.'s 60 million population, an estimated 15 million or 25% regularly do banking transactions on the Internet. Offhand quite an impressive figure, but considering that 80% of households in the U.K. had multiple bank accounts (Cruikshank, 2000), and 40-50% of account holders in Sweden and Finland do internet banking (Deutsche Bank, 2006) - of course, there are only 14 million Swedes and Finns on earth - market penetration remains an issue that point to internet banking's huge, promising, and untapped potential. This essay tries to unravel the mystery with a critical analysis of the internet banking capability of Citibank U.K. But before doing so, we briefly look at the findings of White and Nteli and other academics, and explain our basic method of primary research. A Problem of Banking or Marketing White and Nteli (2004) argued that internet banking is not bringing in the expected numbers because of marketing issues related to five service quality attributes: credibility, security, product variety/diversity, responsiveness, and ease of use. They identified two customer clusters with different priorities: traditional customers with security and credibility concerns, and non-traditional customers focused on ease of use and responsiveness. Both customer clusters gave banks low scores on product variety/diversity, making the authors conclude that this is a potential source of competitive advantage. As White and Nteli (2004) and Kotler and Armstrong (2005) emphasised, systematic application of marketing principles continue to be an important weapon in the banking industry's arsenal, especially in this age of intense global competition. Marketing enables the bank to create value that would attract customers, engaging and retaining them into a long-lasting and profitable relationship. Especially in this age when shopping for value could be done 24/7 at the click of a mouse, banks are pressured to minimise churn whilst maximising customer profitability. Several studies (Stevens, 2006; Wisskirchen, Vater, Wright, De Backer, and Detrick, 2006) show that churn or customer defection rates in key U.K. consumer industries increased from 16.9 percent in 2003 to 19.1 percent in 2005 and