Is it just culture? Or is relationship marketing in an international financial centre superior to one in a small market with a domestic focus?

Sammanfattning: Relationship marketing is today becoming a more important element for the financial service providers, since competition within the market is increasing due to regulations and globalisation. Due to the fact that competition is increasing customer retention is becoming more and more important for the financial service providers. In order for the financial service providers to keep the customers there has to be a certain degree of trust between the actors in the relationship. The purpose with this dissertation is to investigate what causes the differences between strategies of banks in an international financial centre such as Hong Kong, and banks in a smaller market with a domestic focus. Further we wanted to investigate what constitutes a relationship within the financial service industry, and what are the advantages and disadvantages with relationship marketing. In order to answer our research questions we made case studies on Hong Kong and Sweden. Within these case studies we conducted interviews with HSBC, Regan Lam, SEB and Handelsbanken. An additional interview was added in order to identify the differences in culture between Sweden and Hong Kong. Our interview questions related to trust and culture and our interviews were conducted by phone. The result of our research was that there are differences between banks’ strategies in an international financial centre and a small market with a domestic focus. However, they all can be explained by cultural and environmental factors.