ABSTRACT
Understanding consumers and specifi cally, their needs, their expectations and their responses to marketing activity is central to effective marketing. Looking through the contents list for academic journals in the area would suggest that there has been a considerable amount of research done to explore and evaluate the factors that infl uence consumer decision-making, and yet our understanding of how consumers buy fi nancial services is still somewhat imperfect. For many personal consumers, fi nancial services are not seen as particularly interesting or exciting purchases; they are seen as complicated and often it is diffi cult for consumers to identify differences between a bank account from, say, HSBC and one from Standard Chartered or between an insurance policy from Aetna and one from AIA. Consumers fi nd it diffi cult to evaluate their purchase in advance and consequently experience high levels of perceived risk. Furthermore, as explained in Chapter 3, fi nancial services are often seen as uninteresting and consumption is contingent – that is, the services in themselves do not generate a current consumption benefi t, indeed, they can serve to reduce current consumption pleasure. In some cases, fi nancial services may create consumption opportunities in the future; in other cases they may never result in tangible consumption for the individual who made the purchase (e.g. life insurance). Many consumers would regard them as ‘distress purchases’ (i.e. things that they have to buy but don’t want to), and often have little incentive to learn more about such products. Thus, many personal consumers are often rather uninterested and relatively passive buyers. The case study at the end of this chapter pays particular attention to some of the consequences of this issue.
