Identifying the Most Important Marketing Processes in Iran Banking Industry to Develop a Banking Marketing Maturity Model

Objectives The recent shift, from merely traditional approach providing only financial services to the new trend implying banks can be considered as business partners meeting their whole financial needs and creating a win-win relationship, in customers’ opinion towards banks has made banks try to apply banking marketing strategies to help attract more customers and respond to their needs. Hence, it is necessary for executive directors in banking industry and more specifically marketing managers to provide a comprehensive and practical definition of all the aspects of the banking and monetary marketing. They should also be able to act in line with marketing maturity level – the most optimum scenario helping banks seek their objectives and be accounted as pioneers in this field -. Therefore, this study aims at identifying Iran banking marketing processes and evaluating their importance in Iran financial industry in order to identify and prioritize the activities based on each maturity level.   Methodology This descriptive study is practical in nature and cross-sectional exploratory in terms of data collection. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 27 experts and academicians in banking industry. The sample was selected based on non-random purposeful sampling. Shannon entropy approach was applied to classify and rank the processes.   Findings The results of Shannon algorithm showed that banking services management (0.1433), customer service management, advertisement and banking marketing integrated communications (0.1224), pricing and providing banking products and services (0.1042), banking services distribution channels (0.0953), Banking marketing analysis and studies (0.0899) are among the most important banking marketing processes which approves the mixed nature of banking marketing.   Conclusions Banks can classify and constantly evaluate their products based on their profit margin (spread). They can also apply regular and explicit strategies to remove some products or introduce new products and monitor their products based on their life cycle. Banks are also asked to put their maximum effort on prolonging their products maturity period. In so doing, there is a clear relationship between the products/services policies and organizational strategies and services beyond the customers’ expectations and their competitors’ performance, covering their objectives and marketing strategies. Aiming at managing relationships with the customer, banks can plan to identify marketing processes and develop a list of their key customers as an important process in marketing. In addition, banks can promote their technical knowledge of the products and use advertisement to increase their products sale and provide services to the customers through better sale management in line with bank strategies regarding customer classification. Pertinent to pricing of the products and services, banks should always consider the possibility of discounts for their elite customers such as golden and key customers. To do so, the banks should evaluate the pricing system of their competitors in order to present a clear list of their expenses and prices and finally to reflect on pricing and profitability as the basis to ensure their financial profitability objectives and their instance worldwide. Considering the size, objectives, structure and values of the existing sale channels can help banks manage their banking services sales. Banks can also work on appropriate estimations; specifying selling methods based on their customers and identifying the customers’ decision-making strategies in order to affect their purchasing behaviors; modeling the pioneers in banking industry, constant investigation of the customers’ purchasing behaviors and the sale team. They can also highlight increasing their employees’ knowledge and capabilities to promote their share of the market and profitability. It is recommended that banks determine the key features of the distributing channels, size, structure, and values as well as to determine some specific distributing products for special customers, model strategies in the distributing channels based on their opponents.