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The Road from Dependency to Empowerment: The Destination is Worth the Journey

The traditional financial services industry is based on the principles that the customer is ignorant, incompetent, disinterested in money matters, and eager to delegate them to someone he or she trusts. However the psychology and behavior of consumers and the structure and dynamics of the financial services market are starting to shift in a very fundamental way. Information and information technology are the key driving forces. This paper describes how electronic commerce is changing established patterns of influence and control in markets. e-markets will be a harsher ecology, i.e., more crowded and much more competitive. But e-Commerce also will provide new opportunities for differentiation and innovation. Many markets are extremely vulnerable to "disruptive innovations" in product and content integration, in customer information management, and particularly in relationship propositions. The authors present a positive relationship proposition which reveals the dependency model for what it actually is: demeaning, controlling, and exploitative. Customer information management drives a dynamic model of relationship value. The model involves extremely powerful self-reinforcing mechanisms which can be either virtuous or vicious. Growing satisfaction and trust leads the customer to be more open regarding values and needs, and more willing to empower the service provider. As an empowered agent it can search, evaluate, advise, and implement on behalf of the customer. The paper addresses these issues in the context of the UK financial services market, but the ideas and conclusions apply to many other markets.