Bank of Saint Lucia is formed by merging of the Saint Lucia Development Bank and the National Commercial Bank. The macro environmental forces that effects this bank of Saint Lucia are as follows:
The Bank of Saint Lucia are influenced by the political forces present on this island, and thereby governments provides financial support to this bank so that they can increase their required growth (Cherubini, Iasevoli & Michelini, 2015).
The change in consumer behavior towards this bank provides a negative impact on the substantial economic growth. Due to this reason, the marketers of this bank faces various problems in their business.
Social factors include demographics, lifestyles, societies and living patterns and these factors provide a huge positive impact on this bank. The bank provided all sorts of facilities to the people of this island.
The technologies and facilities is not improved in this bank and this lead to problems sometimes for the firm. To improve the facilities the bank is willing to introduce new technological procedures for their consumers.
Ecological issues play a significant role in the business of this bank and therefore in present days the bank is taking serious steps for ecological improvement (Smith, 2016).
The bank follows all the legal rules and regulations of this island and therefore they are able to protect their business from unfair competition and business practices occurring in the market.
The competitive advantage is easily gained by the bank of Saint Lucia because they collect information about their competitors before starting the business in this island. With the help of proper marketed research, they collected various information about their competitive firm and made proper strategies in order to give a good competition with the other similar firms in the market. The bank uses the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix to determine the competitive position, market share and the position of another similar firm (Cherubini, Iasevoli & Michelini, 2015). Therefore with the help of this matrix, the bank made strategies that can easily increase their cash flow, and investment flows too thereby providing a competitive advantage for the firm. In addition, the firm also introduces new technologies as per the current market trends so that they can easily operate the various banking functions and hence it also considered as to be a competitive advantage for the firm. Besides this, the firm has introduced various banking facilities for their consumer so that it increases their consumer base as well as it increases the aggressive approach for the firm too. On the other hand, to provide a highly competitive advantage in comparison to the other similar firm in the market the bank has introduces various types of loan procedure for their consumers.
By this approach, they easily enhance their consumer base, and therefore recently they have developed their bank in various regions of this island. Apart from this the bank also offers insurance facility for their customers in order to provide a high competition with the other similar firm in the market (Ghekiere et al., 2015). Due to this unique as well as differentiation product strategy the firm is able to increase their competitive advantage in comparison to the other similar firm within the island. Another competitive strength of this bank is that they change their banking procedures as per the market demand and thereby it easily increase their number of consumers. In other words, as this Bank of Saint Lucia is one of the leading firms in this island, therefore, the government has supported this firm to increase their financial resources. Hence due to this approach, the bank possesses sufficient financial resources by which they can easily fulfill the needs of their customer base. Therefore it is also considered as the competitive advantage of this firm in comparison to the other banks present in this island. The main source of competitive advantage of this firm is it provides better quality services more efficiently which easily increases their business opportunity throughout the market (Appiah-Adu & Amoako, 2016).
There are many ways to segment a market, and the marketers decide the best way of segmenting their consumer group. In case of this bank of Saint Lucia, the market segmentation are done on the basis of four different types, and they are as follows:
As per the marketing strategy, the firm, in the beginning, was present in only one place of this island but nowadays the use of innovative strategies will help this bank to grow their business in the various geographic location of the island (Moghaddam, Mehrabian & Aghayi, 2014). Therefore, on the basis of macro environmental factors, the governments provides various opportunities to this bank and with the help of these opportunities the bank has eventually developed their firm in major places of this island.
The demographic segmentation is generally based on age, lifestyle, social class, and income and on the basis of that bank of Saint Lucia has generated different policies for the various classes as well as the ages of people. On the baize of age, they make a different plan for both children and adults. In the case of children, the firm has introduced a zero balance account, and they provide education loan facilities for this children group. In addition for the adults, they introduces various loan facilities such as home loan, car loan and so on and all these loans are provided at a minimal interest rate (Dadzie, Amponsah, Dadzie & Winston, 2017). In other words, on the basis of society, the bank divided the policies according to the income rate and social class of their consumers. By following these approaches, they divided the demographic segmentation of their consumer group.
Physiographic segmentation is generally based on both personalities as well as the lifestyle of an individual. Therefore, the marketing strategies concerning this segmentation group are that the firm has divided people into groups according to their lifestyle, culture, and personality. In these groups, they provided different opportunities for these peoples so that no one can be offended by their company policy and it does not affect their functional processes (Nguru, Ombui & Iravo, 2017).
Behavioral segmentation is based on the relationship with the products and services that provides a huge advantage to the consumer group. In accordance with the bank of Saint Lucia has provided benefits regarding interest rate, loyalty status and all types of the loan so that they can easily grab their customer attention (Langfield & Pagano, 2016).
Having clear target market strategies as well as target base help a firm to grow their business in the market. By following this approach, the Bank of Saint Lucia has targeted both children of age between 8 to 15 years and make policy according to their needs. The bank has also targeted another market segment of people age between 30 to 45 years, and according to the firm, this is the main target market of their business (Chahal & Bakshi, 2015). Therefore, in order to increase their targeting base, the firm offers different marketing mixes on the basis of their different target groups. The main motive of this differentiated targeting procedure is to develop their bank and achieve a high market share with each of these chosen market segments. In addition, the bank also uses focused targeting procedure because with the help of this following procedure they gather detailed information is reading their target market segment and on the basis of that they introduce innovative strategies. Therefore it is clear that with the help of focused targeting strategies the firm designed their services so that it easily meets the consumer demands of their chosen customer segment.
The Bank of Saint Lucia uses a successful positioning strategy and thereby make a favorable position in the market as well as in the mind of their targeted consumer group. In order to make a good position in the market, the firm offers various loans such as home loan, car loan education loan and so on at a low amount of interest. Due to this innovative strategy, the firm often builds the trust of their consumer groups and thereby enhances their position in the market (Saeidi, Sofian, Saeidi, Saeidi & Saaeidi, 2015). Another positioning strategy of this bank is that they provide reliability and various financial features for their consumer base so that they easily satisfy their consumer needs. Therefore with the help of these marketing as well as positioning strategies, the Bank of Saint Lucia become able to make a leading position in their business and market respectively.
For branding of the bank throughout their target market, brand leadership is important which helps the customer to know about the brand’s product and its usefulness. Therefore, for branding purposes, the Bank of Saint Lucia has made unique product offering in comparison to the other bank in Saint Lucia with an attractive design, symbol, and bank logo that easily differentiate their bank from others (Berger & Roman, 2015). In addition, to maintain the branding as well as company reputation the bank has provided all procedure in a manageable aspect and also in a well-protected manner. In the current market products are very much transient, and therefore consumer always wanted security as well as continuity in the services or products offered by the company.
Hence, with this marketing theory, the bank of Saint Lucia ensures proper security, as well as safety procedures, which will be provided by their consumers’ group, and thereby it will help them to enhance their brand reputation in the country of Saint Lucia. In recent year, the company has decided to increase their brand growth internationally so that it enhances their company as well as branding too. For this reason, they introduce a new strategy of incorporating their brand into other countries of the world. According to the new strategy they chose brand acquisition procedure where they collaborate with the leading companies of the particular countries where they chose to introduce their brand (Schlegelmilch, 2016). With the help of this strategy, they can easily increase their branding as well as business profitability in all of the markets where they are going to expand their business. By this way, the Bank of Saint Lucia has increased their branding procedure in various markets of the world.
Consumer behavior is one of the largest areas of research for this Bank of Saint Lucia because it is the marketing areas that help a firm to develop their profitability in the respective business. In order to make a successful innovative firm in the island of Saint Lucia the bank cite ” consumer intimacy” as one of the key drivers of these areas. To develop this consumer intimacy approach, they do a survey that helps them to understand consumer behaviors as well as their needs from this particular bank (Lees, Winchester & De Silva, 2016). Besides this, to make a positive impact on the consumer behavior the bank has to incorporate various consumer behavior models such as the cognitive model and behavioral model. With the help of this model the firm can focus on the various aspect of customer behaviors experience, and according to that, they will change their statistics easily. It is seen that the cognitive model focused on the customer mind and assumed to possess the needs of the individual consumer through several information processing mechanisms (Theotokis & Manganari, 2015). Therefore with the help of this model the bank understand the consumer needs and thereby changes their policy according to that need. Hence by this strategy, they maintain a positive consumer behavior that not only helps them to increase their trust over customer but also by this approach the business profitability also enhances.
Another model used by this bank to determine consumer behavior is the behavioral model (Asiedu, 2016). The behavioral model mainly focuses on the environmental situation as well as the determinants because the consumer needs are always changing with the environment. In accordance with this model, the Bank of Saint Lucia has incorporated various policies and loan procedure according to the needs of the changing environment so that their targeted customer will be satisfied by their company policy. In other words, with the help of this model the bank introduce various procedure as per the current market and thereby it helps the customer to maintain a positive behavior with this bank. In addition, consumer behavior might be change one the basis of social and cultural influences. Social influence is particularly prevalent to the younger group of people because their mind always changes with the similar environment (Zeugner-Roth, Žabkar & Diamantopoulos, 2015). These groups of people are mainly influenced by their friends and family and therefore act according to the situation as well as the environment. In addition, religion and culture are also factors that easily changes consumer behavior.
Growth opportunities of Bank of Saint Lucia
In relation to the macro environmental factors the two growth opportunities of this bank of Saint Lucia are as follows:
In today’s environment, most of the financial services organizations have begun to monetize their data so that it helps them to increase their business performance in the corresponding market. Hence, the Bank of Saint Lucia should monetize their data so that it helps to increase their business growth as well as performance in this island (Fatema, Azad & Masum, 2015). There are various ways to monetize the data and one of the way that should be used by this bank to enhance their performance is to incorporate new analytics in their functional system. Another way is that the bank should incorporate new offerings such as benchmark or reports analytics on the basis of their bank data. In order to incorporate this analytics in the sound functional system, they have to take permission as well as online e-service access from their federal government. As from the previous analysis, it is clear that government has supported this firm to grow their business performance so in order to get permission and to incorporate online services it is clear that the bank does not faces any sorts of problem. Also, with the help of this analytics the bank use the data that they collected for verifying their consumers’ identities and provide a secure capability at a national scale (Chaouali, Yahia & Souiden, 2016). Therefore, by this analytics, the bank will easily secure their consumers’ identities and all data or information regarding them, and thus it helps the bank to gain access to new potential customers.
The bank should employ novel business model or digital channels so that they can easily enter new market segments or geographies and thereby increase their target consumer base in the other countries or market where they expand their business. The digital attacker defines online banking procedure so that every individual can access their bank accounts from any location of the world (Hughes, Mester & Moon, 2017). Therefore by this approach not only the Bank of Saint Lucia has increased their business growth to various countries of the world but the consumer also gets opportunities to access their accounts easily without going to the respective bank. Besides this, with the help of this digital attacker strategy, the firm can easily enter into the new segments or market without spending so much physical infrastructure (Hoffmann, Bertín & Warleta, 2014). Therefore by this procedure, the firm will save their profits, and the cost of operation procedure will easily decrease.
Hence, it can be said that both these opportunities will influence the growth as well as the performance of the Bank of Saint Lucia in various countries and markets of the nation.
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