A Research On Marketing Issues Of China's State-owned Commercial Banks

With the further opening up of financial markets, the rapid development of capital markets, the increasingly intensified inter-bank competition and, with China's accession into WTO, the rushing-in of foreign-capital banks, China's financial markets are shifting gradually from sellers market to buyers market and the operational environments of commercial banks are undergoing profound changes. In an environment of intensive market competition, only if state-owned commercial banks change their outdated operational and business development strategies, introduce modern marketing philosophy and fully adopt the market-oriented, customer-centered and benefit-targeted marketing management, and timely adapt products and services to the changing customer needs and business environments, can they improve their competitiveness and market shares and survive the competition.However, China's state-owned commercial banks, which are developed out of a planned economy and are currently in the process of transiting to true commercial banks, have begun marketing research only recently. Although marketing theory and concept have been put into practice, these banks are still far lagging behind in marketing concept, marketing mechanism and the employ of marketing strategies and means, compared with their experienced foreign counterparts. The manifestation of such gaps includes the weak awareness of overall marketing, the imperfect marketing organization and mechanism, the lack of a uniform strategic planning and a definite marketing positioning, the immaturity of true R&D mechanism and market pricing mechanism for financial products, the unsystematic use of promotion means, the unsatisfactory effects of mix policies used, the inefficiency and irrational structure of distributionchannels, the imperfect distribution technology, the imperfect information system and the incompetence of marketing team. In order to face the challenge of international competition, improve the market adaptiveness and competitiveness and optimize resource configuration, China's state-owned commercial banks should truly change their conception, speed up their reform and development, establish marketing concept and mechanism compatible with modern commercial banks, and conduct their operation under the guidance of scientific marketing policies.Taking the theories of marketing, economics of money and banking and modern enterprise management as theoretical foundation, modern commercial banks as benchmark, China's accession into WTO as social background, this dissertation analyzes the changes of market and customer needs, examines the marketing policies and behaviors of China's state-owned commercial banks, explicates the essence and orientation of marketing policies for state-owned commercial banks, and puts forth market competition strategies. The dissertation consists of five parts:Part I, beginning with the basic concepts of marketing and bank marketing, analyzes the uniqueness of bank marketing compared with ordinary business marketing, and examines briefly the history of bank marketing.Part II, from the angle of the changes of internal and external environments, analyzes the competition environments facing state-owned commercial banks and the significance of the application of marketing principles.Part III focuses on the brief description of the process, characters and trends of bank marketing in China.Part IV, referring to the successful marketing experience of foreigncommercial banks, analyzes in comparison the problems currently commonly found in the implementation of marketing by state-owned commercial banks, regarding concepts, policies, mechanism and means.Part V offers proposals of countermeasures of improving the competitiveness of state-owned commercial banks through proper application of marketing strategies from ten aspects. These proposals were as follows: fulfill the transformation of operational concepts as soon as possible and establish a brand-new modern marketing philosophy of commercial banks; intensify the effo...