Introduction In the financial services industry, there are as many varieties of pure services as there are of financial instruments.

However, financial instruments are not commodities like consumer durables or non-durables; the role of the seller of a financial commodity does not end with designing, quality control, delivery and need based after sales services. Such instruments in the financial market, during their entire lifetime, require a continuing connectivity between the customer and the seller. For example, when a bond (a financial instrument) is issued, the investor (customer) continues to be concerned about the debt-servicing ability of the issuer, regularity of interest payment, etc. Thus, the service feature is predominantly the general characteristic of all financial products. Consequently, the marketing of financial products is best understoon as service marketing.

Transformation in mfs Fsps are required to pay close attention to the trends and development in the environments and make adjustments to their marketing strategies in order to survive a grow. Such trends and forces elicit a new set

of beliefs and practices. Several changes were thus observed in the Indian financial services marketing scenario over the past decade or so. In the following section we will examine this changing situation with a few examples of commercial banks, old players in the Indian financial services industry by and large, however, these changes continue to affect other players in the industry well in one way or the other. 1. Delegating marketing responsibility at all level.example : in a typical nationalised bank, the major group of players in this category till the 1980s, the marketing functions was handled by the branch manager and at most few more individuals. It was considered a seller s market nad customer service was often a lip service. The scenario changed as the new set of private banks offered stiff competition. They started with a different organisational structure, and with delegation of marketing responsibility. Direct selling agents (dsas), tele-marketing executives (tmes) and direct marketing ececutives (dems) were appointed as agents of banks to undertake their direct marketing operations. The rbi policy for branch opening closing down non-profitable branches was also relaxed i order to ensure a stronger commercial orientation by banks. With the threat of unprofitable branches closing down and computerisation releasing

worker s time for customer interaction, the attitude in nationalised banks also started changing. 2. Change from oragizing by product units to oragizing by custermer segments Example: in the 1980s it was the usp of only a select few foreign banks that a customer walking into a branch would get single window service for all products. With computerisation, many of the erstwhile depatmentalised bank branches now offers such multiple servies through a single multiple counter.

3.change from making everything to selling other s products: Example: bank assurance ,or distribution of insurance products through bank s distribution channels began in india with the opening up of the insurance industry to private sector participation in dec 1999, which saw the entry of 20 new players with 12 in the life insurance sector and eight in the non-life sector.

4. Change from relying on old market position to uncovering new ones: Example: till the 1980s, the retail deposit customer in india would consider safety, liquidity,return, timely payment of interest, acccuracy of computation,

convenient branch timing , freindly behaviour of personnel , etc. As the only parameter against which they would compare competing commercial banks. Today, additional features like flexibility of switching between fixed deposits and savings bank deposits, availability of atms, debit cards, internet banking facilities are example of expanding customer needs. The exact position of which a commercial bank wold like to take vis-a-vis its competitors may cahnge accordingly, depending upon the prefences of its target group of clients. 5.change from tangible product features to intangible product features: Example: in the west, the retail deposit custom of banks moved from a cash less society (where the transaction through chewues replaced cash transaction) to a cheque less society (where electronic transfer replaced cheque transaction.) The discomfort with the latter was predominantly with the older prople, who still preffered to handle tangible pass book and cheque books. Compared to this, the indian retail bank depositors almost step-jumped from cash transaction to electronic transfers. Delays in cheque clearing, absence of specific remedy for cheque dishonour in the century old negotiable instruements act took time to get addressed. By then the next technology, viz electronic banking became available.

The usage nonetheless, remains acutely skewed. The precentage of atms or point of sale card swiping facility is still small . Cash transaction therefore continues to remain popular. As a partof the strategy adopted by the nationalized banks to bring down expenditure cost and to remain competitive in wake of the stiff challenge posted by the private banks including foreign banks, customer are generally adviced to go for atm cards so that a drastic reduction in the issue of cheque books is possible. 6. Changes in the focus of advertising : Example: in india advertisement by commercial banks has increased rather than decreased in the last two decades but a spirit of change in distinctly perceptible. Earlier the advertisement of lage nationalised banks were mostly of an announcement nature and usually released through a join publicity committee. Individual advertising was only sporatic thereby a general attemp was to communicate a me-too nature of a nationalised banks rather than any product or image differenciation. In an era of liberalization, such nationalised bank had to compete with the private bank aggressively positioning themselves as customer freindly and technology savvy.also they need to communicate to a relatively affluent and young audience , committed to consumerism savvy with self service technology and much more discerning. For

them banks had to become institution that they can relate to. As such, banks suddenly realised the need to advertise not only more but also differently.icici bank and state bank of india became the largest spenders in this regard and , may not be co-incidentally, also reported the highest profit in the industry. 7. Changes from attracting customers through stores ans salepeople to making products available online today banks, like most other financial service institutions,provide interest selling as an alternative to traditional face to faces selling. However consumer s preference for face-to face interaction varies significantly across different financial products and services. Acknowledgement of such differences is an essential