Product Testing in Financial Services: An Application

Abstract

Credit Marketing has come a long way in today’s economy of hard-hitting competition and diminishing customer loyalty. With the increasing level of cut-throat competition, decreasing customer loyalty and the increasing commoditization of banking products, it has become essential in today’s sluggish economy for banks to proactively understand the changing customer preference. Understanding the changing customer preference can help build a value proposition for the Bank since banks today, are flexible enough to align their products towards the value needs of their customers. Traditional testing by the direct marketers has involved split groups, like an apple to apple, to compare customers’ reaction to different offers. Therefore, with changing times, the traditional process of testing has become cumbersome. This study is aimed at demonstrating the benefits of product testing using experimental design to the bank’s marketing team. We analyse a factorial model and demonstrates the results of incremental lifts in the market response rates. We conclude that incremental lifts in response rates are much higher against lower interest rates for home loans and lower late fees for credit cards. It also provides significant insights to the design of Banks’ offers.