Relationships and the business-to-business marketing of financial services

This chapter examines the business-to-business (B2B) marketing relationships between financial services firms and business users of their products and services. As such, it complements Chapter 11 on customer relationships. It should be noted that B2B marketing has received less research interest than business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. There are a number of possible reasons for the relative absence of research in this area; to name just a few factors that explain this relative neglect, these include: lack of access to data, the complexities of the relationships, the lack of apparent uniformity in the service offering, and the diverse nature of the businesses involved.
The chapter starts by first providing some background on the different financial firms involved, namely banks, asset management firms, and insurance companies, and the marketing challenges they face. This overview highlights the fact that B2B marketing involves satisfying the product and service needs of knowledgeable professionals and their advisors. It identifies the following themes in the literature: the antecedents that influence the entrance and exit decisions for business purchase and relationship decisions; the determinants of the length and duration of those relationships; and core service marketing issues, such as trust, communication, and commitment that affect value perceptions of the service offering.