Marketing planning - HSBC Holdings plc
UNIT 5 COURSEWORK ASSIGNMENT: MARKETING PLANNING
DAN PHILLIPS
Section 1 - Background Introduction
- Introduction
Headquartered in London, HSBC Holdings plc is one of the largest banking and financial services organizations in the world. HSBC has an international network comprising of over 9,500 offices in 80 countries and territories in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa. Around 190,000 shareholders in some 100 countries and territories, have shares in the company.
HSBC provides banking not only for individuals but also largely for businesses.
Through an international network linked by advanced technology, including a rapidly growing e-commerce capability, HSBC provides a comprehensive range of financial services: personal financial services; commercial banking; corporate, investment banking and markets; private banking; and other activities.
One of HSBC's fastest growing services is their e-banking. This involves encouraging customers to complete their transactions on the internet instead of through a bank and bankers directly. This is the service which I am going to look into.
HSBC own First Direct which specializes in Online and telephone banking, boosting the market dominance and market share of HSBC. As well as First Direct, HSBC also own a number of smaller banking businesses which include HFC.
HSBC have many objectives as a business. As they are predominately a profit making organization, their first objective is to maximize profits. Secondly they strive to increase their market share in the e-banking market and to become market leaders. Another key objective for HSBC is to provide their customers with an efficient, high quality service.
- Product Placement
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This is a preview of the whole essay
HSBC own First Direct which specializes in Online and telephone banking, boosting the market dominance and market share of HSBC. As well as First Direct, HSBC also own a number of smaller banking businesses which include HFC.
HSBC have many objectives as a business. As they are predominately a profit making organization, their first objective is to maximize profits. Secondly they strive to increase their market share in the e-banking market and to become market leaders. Another key objective for HSBC is to provide their customers with an efficient, high quality service.
- Product Placement
To allow me to identify the placement of HSBC and its competitors on the product placement chart I first identified their main competitors. I conducted an interview with a service manager at a local HSBC branch (Derby Branch), during this interview, she stated that; Halifax, EGG, Intelligent Finance, Royal Bank of Scotland and the National Westminster are the major competitors towards HSBC and First Direct. Even though there are many more banking establishments that this (both offline and online), this is all that is considered to be a major competitor to HSBC for market share within the UK.
I then questioned 40 customers using the HSBC banking service about what they felt to be the most important aspects when choosing who to bank with. My results showed two main aspects. These are, interest charged and quality of service provided. I also questioned all of these customers about how they felt each of the companies should score in these aspects and how they related to each other in the named main areas. I took all the answers to the questions which I asked in this questionnaire and looked at how people viewed each of the competitor's quality of service, thus aiding me plot the different companies onto the product placement chart, along with knowledge and information from the internet of what interest rates are charged by each company.
The customers which have been questioned feel that NatWest offers the best quality of service, with HSBC felt to offer the 4th best quality of service and the 4th highest interest rate. Intelligent Finance offers the best interest rate, this can be justified as they need to make less profit in order to maximise profits as there are no 'banks', as such, and only need to pay staff to man phones and website and not have to pay much overhead costs.
- Market Segment
As online banking is a generic service, where it is not aimed at one specific gender as anyone can use the service that has access to a computer. Co-incidentally the people I interviewed, all of which use online banking, are split 20-20 between the genders, thus showing the equal use of the internet service between the genders.
Between the ages 16 and 65 there is very little fluctuation between the amount of people which use the service, but tails off at both ends of the 16-65 range. However, as these results are very close, slight interviewer biasness could possibly occur, thus not giving true reflections of the data. I expected this figured to reflect the questionnaire like this, as those in the older generation (65+) are very wary when using computers, especially with secure information such as banking details. This could be something looked upon by the staff at HSBC to strengthen their market share.
Upon questions the service manager at HSBC, she stated that 'there is no necessary market audience that we target as we would like this service to be used by anyone, however we do find that parents with children and those in a 9 till 5 job use the service more often than others and cannot get into the bank during working hours.' This is backed up with my questionnaire as the majority of people that use the online banking service are team-members which have fixed hours, usually 9-5. However the self-employed sector being so high surprised me, as I expected this to be lower as they have more 'flexi-hours' and could make it into the bank during free hours, conversely time is money where self employed workers are concerned therefore using the internet for banking would free up for time during the working day for extra work, thus increasing profits.
Overall I can conclude that the market segment for HSBC is around mid-age, those which are in the £31,000-£40,000 income bracket, as these are the most likely to be working 9-5 as they are less likely to be executives which own the business therefore giving them less chance to have access to a bank.
UNIT 5 COURSEWORK ASSIGNMENT: MARKETING PLANNING
Dan Phillips Page1 5/2/2007
