CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The world economy faces many challenges that test every nation’s ability to meet the demands of a global market place. In response to and as a reflection of this development, the Nigerian economy in advancing and meaningful, the component industries and sector of the economy must in consonance respond to the same challenges. The Nigerian banking industry is one of such industries undergoing the greatest challenges today.
The liberalization of the licensing of a new financial institution gave birth to new banks and non-bank financial institutions. This proliferation presets a special challenge, which has led to keen competition in the banking industry. Another challenge comes from the technological environment. Electronic banking has posed a great challenge especially to the older banks because of their size and location of their rural branches where there are no facilities. All these abound with the availability of differentiated products indicate to an extent the most competitive period in the Nigerian banking strategies, an increase in the quality of bank services, though under a restrictive monetary policy regime.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Banking has now become a large and complex service industry, there by making the task of identifying the changing needs of customer as complex as the marketing task in the product industries. Due to the rapid changes in customer needs and the business environment, the continued success of a bank will depend on its ability to respond rapidly and correctly to the changing environment and provide the broadest range of profitable financial services to the greatest number of people. It is therefore imperative that banks should thoroughly appreciate the importance of marketing philosophy in forming an integral part of the corporate objectives of banks.
Gone are the days, when banks waited for business, the banks now have to look for the services they can offer and go out of their way to approach the client to whom such services are sold. They must take pains to study the potential customer requirement before approaching them and the services must be offered with maximum satisfaction to existing and potential customers. This is no doubt a revolution, a transition from passive and quiet banking to the active and aggressive banking.