E-Broking As a Tool for Marketing Financial Services in the Global Market
Summary
For any organization to thrive in today's business environment, it must deal effectively with global competition and the rapid pace of technological change. The Internet has played a vital role in transforming business in the new millennium. As an innovative tool, the Internet is gradually entering our lives and improving cost effectiveness, catalyzing disintegration, and increasing convenience for businesses and their consumers. Perhaps, nowhere else is the impact of the Net felt as much as in the marketing of services sector"-it has- opened new channels for service delivery, shortened turnaround times, and offered unprecedented convenience to customers. The focus of this paper is on the "marketing of financial services," with special emphasis on 'e-broking'. The paper discusses e-service revolution. It also summarizes distinct phases in the development of e-broking and the mechanism of e-trading. The "Six 'S' Model", which provides a framework for analyzing the potential e-enablement of a service is also discussed. The benefits for users and brokers are also enumerated. Some problems caused by switching over to an e-broking system are deliberated. For any e-trading system to be successful, one should provide for foolproof security, reliability and confidentiality of data. The key success factors, various security models that are adopted by the e-broking industry are elaborated. The paper portrays the prospects for an e-broking industry around the globe.
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Extract
E-Broking As a Tool for Marketing Financial Services in the Global Market
Over the last few centuries, human beings have experienced two major revolutions-the industrial and electronic. The former transformed our society from agriculture to industry based, whereas the latter transformed our society from being mechanical to electronics based. As we enter the 21st century, we are seeing the beginning of a new revolution, namely the network revolution. It interconnects different parts of the world, enabling the seamless flow of information. The Internet is the engine of this revolution and electronic commerce (e-commerce) is its fuel, (Turban et al 2000). In the mid-1990s, the term "Web economy" had not yet been coined; it is now a common phrase in business circles.
It is very unfortunate that the media has been as prompt in writing-off the Internet as it was in canvassing for it. However, the truth is that the Internet is neither a sweeping change that could change the face of business overnight, nor as banal a force as the media would now have us believe. Professor Hanson, in his classic book (2001) Principles of Internet Marketing, beautifully sums up the real situation as: " The Internet is definitely a force with potential to change the ways the world operates, though not overnight...It is slowly entering our lives and becoming as ubiquitous as electricity...It is improving cost-efficiencies, catalyzing disintegration, and increasing convenience for businesses and their consumers." With the advent of Internet technologies and advanced cryptographic techniques, it is now feasible to implement ecommerce and e-business over a public network-the Internet.THE E-SERVICE (R) EVOLUTIONPerhaps nowhere else is the impact of the Internet felt as much as in the services sector. "The delivery of a service via the Internet to the consume...See the full content of this document