Mrkt 2333 Riverside Credit Union

Case 10 report summary

Chao(Kevin) Han

Student # 100359681

Course: MRKT 2333

Professor: Imran Raza

Date: Jan 25, 2018

1. Define the main problem

Due to the facts of Riverside Credit Union, the main concern of Mr. Frank Timmerman, as the vice-president of marketing at Riverside Credit Union is about how to differentiate all customers within the entire market and have a better understanding of the various segment profiles to associate the Credit Union with a better target appreciate financial products to members in order to achieve more accurate profitability analysis.

1. Elaborate on the key issues in order of importance.

As a result of Riverside Credit Union has grown into a pretty profound financial institution, the more clearly that Riverside Credit Union identifies themselves are facing a certain amount of challenges need to be solved in advance. The primary key issue would be how to segment the entire market in order to sell their services better. Since the foundation of Riverside Credit Union, it has 15 branches, 30 ATMs, PC banking, a call centre as well as a number of mortgage development managers with the estimation of almost $2.5 billion assets under their administration. The secondary issue would be the collection of mass customers’ data to have better services to all potential and existing customers. Because Riverside Credit Union is building up his reputation and company image as well as its beneficial audients, the method of how to collect the customers’ feedbacks and preference would be essential for upgrading company’s services and attitudes toward other professional financial institutions. The last key issue is how to maintain a good relationship and connection with both your existing and potential customers. This will be critical for competing your business among all other competitors, such as coast capital, envision wealth management or other financial institutions.

1. Environmental analysis --- Economics, Political, Demographic, Competitive, Technological, Ecological, Social and Cultural.

Based on the concept of environmental analysis and member segment profiles, we find out that the current financial institutions are facing a great challenge of technological innovation. Back to the 1990, there are only several sources of access of withdrawing the money from your bank account. For instance, if you want to transfer the amount of $100 from your checking account to saving account, either you will go to the bank teller and present your ID to authorize the banking staff to take out the money from your bank account or go to the ATM machine to withdraw the money yourself. But nowadays pretty much most of the processes are changed due to the technological innovation. For example, if you want to transfer $100 from your checking account to your saving account. There are plenty ways you can do it, firstly, you can access your online banking with your laptop; or you can authorize your access code to someone to do the transfer for you. According to the data collection from member segment profiles, traditional channel usage still posses the 4th largest group of users who preferred the old fashion banking system. But the rest of users adapt new methods of payment pretty quickly.

1. S.W.O.T. Analysis --- Based on company’s micro and macro environment.

There are internal factors, which in business context may include financial resources, human resources, facilities, equipment, processes and systems. They may also include elements such as business culture, certifications, reputation and etc. For the conditions of Riverside Credit Union, the strengths of Riverside Credit Union is that it has large amount of assets to guarantee the total operating and inventory costs can be covered and Riverside a good reputation within the business. The weakness would be the brand equity and unclear market segmentation.

For the aspects of opportunities and threats, Riverside are facing several opportunities as well as threats, for the most critical opportunity would be the Member Database Information System. Thanks to the invention of MDIS, the operation department can easily trace the existing members saving habits in order to give them better quality of financial services. Because MDIS can easily find out the members’ preferences, it will help Riverside Credit Union to maintain the current customers as well as to acquire more business from the referrals from existing members. The threat they are facing currently is the ambiguity of market segmentation. The marketing department has no clue how to posses the most focus on which type of markets.