Choosing and upgrading financial services dealers in the US and UK

摘要

This paper addresses a gap in the international literature aimed at understanding the impact of the marketing mix on choosing and upgrading business-to-business financial services dealers. This study involves two important financial services markets (foreign exchange and bonds) in two leading countries in financial services (the United States and the United Kingdom). It provides a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of marketing mix variables ("price", "product", and "promotion" in this case) in determining (a) choice of dealers and (b) how a utilized dealer may achieve the sought-after status of being among the top three dealers of a customer. The impact of the marketing mix variables on the choice of dealer is significantly greater in the US relative to the UK. However, a two-stage analysis shows no significant country differences in the impact of the marketing mix on how a dealer is upgraded to a top three status with a customer. Further, the effects of the individual marketing mix variables are more nearly equal in the determination of whether a utilized dealer is among the top three dealers relative to the choice stage. Finally, consistent with our hypothesis, the bond market is more price sensitive relative to foreign exchange and the foreign exchange market is more product sensitive than the bond market.