Marketing Strategy for Financial Services in Indian Financial Service Institutions

Indian financial sector passed through various stages of development including pre-nationalization, post-nationalization and the recent one post-liberalization. In these stages, marketing was at hibernation mode, as the relationship between banking and marketing was not considered important. However, the recent developments in the Indian financial sector as well as changes in customer preferences towards financial services have aggravated a need for a stronger relationship between marketing and financial service institutions. This thought grew up after there was a realization of the sustainable structure. In light of the above development, authors have attempted to study and explore the marketing strategy of financial service institutions specifically for financial products and services to target retail customers. This exploratory research is carried out by interviewing around 285 employees (in sales and marketing in banks and NBFCs) in Delhi-NCR region through a structured questionnaire. A total of 24 factors were identified through the literature available on the topic (factors that affect the marketing strategy of financial services offered). Exploratory factor analysis was applied, and it was found that five most influential factors are devising a differential marketing strategy. This marketing strategy has been named as 'PRISM' (acronym of the strategies developed).