Retail Banking in Greece - New perspectives through customer orientation in a slowly saturated market
Niko Mikopoulos
Bachelor Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 2.0, University of Applied Sciences Zurich, language: English, abstract: Every year millions of tourists from all over the world choose Greece and the
Greek Islands for their summer destination and travel to Greece to enjoy the
friendly climate, the blue and clear seas and the fantastic hospitality and natural environment. Beside of this known face of Greece the last year’s Greek economy is one of the boosting economies in the European community. Quite after the successful organization of the Olympic Games in 2004, the domestic economy
improves and the demand from the private sector and households for banking
products services expands dramatically. The Greek Retail Banks benefit from this
macro economic development and generate extremely good revenues and market
shares in the domestic market with the current customer base and new
acquisitions. Nevertheless, slowly signs of a saturated market and competition
within the traditional Greek banks forcing the banks to optimize their bankcustomer relationships with their current customer base and to look for new
channels to growth and to attain a competitive advantage against new Bank
entrepreneurs in the market.
This thesis describes on a scientific and methodical method the problem of the
slowly market saturation in the retail banking sector and develops a problem
solution based on the question of how new perspectives and chances will arise
through implementation of customer-orientation to support long-term and
profitable bank-customer relationships. In addition, the SWOT-Analysis of the
three key players in the Greek retail banking market identifies their internal and external capabilities of their current customer oriented strategies. Finally, the thesis closes with a recommendation and conclusion on how the CRM framework gives new perspectives with concepts, methods and tools contributes for a successful implementation of customer-orientation.