HSBC Premier in China - Climates

We choie PEST to analyse the Climates

Policy : foreigner bank are under the Chinese Foreign Banking Supervisory Rules , but they are treated almost the same with the local banks by the government .

Economic: china have a continuing growth on GDP even during the financial crisis.

Social : with the Confucianism in the Chinese culture. People prefer the banks they familiar with.

And they want personalized services for their ego need, which we called ‘face’

More and more people are interest in their own financial management.

Technical : china has the largest number of Internet users in the world. Which increased the importance of online banking services.   

Also new financial analysis techologes are creating challenges and optunitis in the same time.

In conclusion:

After China joint WTO, they made promise to open up their financial market to foreigner investors in 5 years. Because of this, HSBC was able to started operation on 2 April 2007 as HSBC Bank(China) Company Limited. It will be challenge to let customers choose HSBC over the local major banks, but it is a great market with huge opportunities.

HSBC Premier in China - Competitors

In our group project, the product is focusing on the HSBC Premier services.  We comparing it with major bank's VIP services.
1.HSBC Premier does not provide VIP rest room in airports while major local banks' VIP services providing it.
2.HSBC Premier does not provide good promotion on Golf play only 20% off on tickets, while major local banks even provide free play.
3.HSBC Premier does not provide unlimited transaction on online banking, while major local banks providing it.
4.HSBC only have 24 branches in mainland China.

These are the major weakness to competitors.

HSBC Premier Family Service

HSBC Premier Family Service is a set of services offer to HSBC Premier customers.

This set of services launched in HSBC China at May 2009. The services including "integrated family financial planning for education, medical, home mortgage and retirement services (information came from HSBC China Website)" .

The most important part in these services is the financial planning for education, as other parts are hard to take advantages from local banks. The main reason is the global convenience that HSBC provides.

China has a huge number of families that send their children study aboard and the three major countries they picked the most are US, UK and AU. HSBC recognised this needs of Chinese families and offering consolation on these three location. 

On the HSBC China Official Website, in the HSBC Premier Family Service page, you can choose from a map where have those three location for consolation.

This is a very attractive service to the target market ,which is rich family have sending member study aboard ,as far as I asked. However, only few families actuarially know this service.  As I know, all my Chinese friends who studying aboard, including UK and AU. Only one of them is using this service and her family is living in Canada, and almost all my friend who from China mainland only know HSBC is a bank but nothing about their global convenience services as HSBC Premier.

In my point of view, HSBC Premier is a great product, but with no enough advertisings. "The world's local bank" is no enough to introduce HSBC Premier. 

HSBC Premier

overview the HSBC Premier service in the wold is great.
In UK, it is very very convenience to the foreigner customers. In UK, you have to have a post address to apply for bank account, and some bank even charge monthly on a foreigner student account. as my personal experience, when me and my mom were at UK, HSBC was the only one willing to offer us an account to help us out -- as we needed an account to transfer money while we forgot to bring any cash with us.
comparing with other banks in UK, we tried asked four major banks in UK, and we offered the same condition, which is we needed a premier account but we living in hotel at that moment. HSBC UK offers a premier brand image and high quality services, they knows catch value customers rather than push them away.
Further more, there was a time I forgot my PIN number while I traveling London. I only used my passport to take cash out from HSBC with nothing else even no card with me, and the whole process was less than 10 mins more then 5 mins in this time was waiting for them to bring and count the cash.

There is no doubt that HSBC Premier in UK provides excellent services. They positioning themselves as a much better services provider with a premier brand image and require a higher amount to open and maintain the account. They are targeting value customers and they want high level of customer loyalty, as the Kumar model suggest they become true friends with their customers, they did make me fell they are my true friend after my personal experience.

HSBC in China

HSBC premier isn't doing so well. as we are their costumers, their global function is really great with no doubt. but in China, a transfer limit as 200,000 RMB yuan per day, and 50,000 RMB yuan per transaction(information from my mom's manager, isn't available online) is not convenient to use for rich people to do their business.

Although HSBC Premier is positioning itself as a personal banking services, but as far as i know from my mom's friends, they all using their personal bank account as well as their business account. so as they targeting rich people between 35-50 years old. the limit they sat up is hard to fit those people's business needs.

considering there is no rules in the Law as they should have this limit. they have to change the limit on the Premier services, even me was shocked as i thought it should have no limit at all at first.    

HSBC is on the streets

have you seen those girls in red, HSBC logos shirts yet? they are smiling and giving candies, sending brochures to let people know that HSBC is here, in Canberra.

after i came here, almost every friend of mine does't know where HSBC is, even though it locate right next to the city centre's main door as it always choose main shopping mall to open their branch.

I think it is part of HSBC's promotion strategy and communication. they opened their branch in canberra for a while now, lots people still don;t know where it is. that's why they sending girls to streets to let people be aware of they are here.
next, the candies can give people a good image of the brand. if they only giving brochures it would feel like junk message hard to led to like the brand.
finally, the brochures will provide more information of the brand, what they do and where they are.

with this move, HSBC would like to be in the preference, to led people go the the branch or call.
in my opinion, HSBC should do better with the red T-shirts. it's not easy to see the logo,  and not enough impress.  

Pricing

pricing is basing on 4 fundamentals, including value, competition, costs,and legal& ethical issue.
as a marketer need to choose the pricing strategy considering these four factors.
on the other hand, as a customer, some time when I facing an unknown brand's product. the first fact i will consider is its price. if it's cheap, i will think it contain lower value than the higher price one.
there are lots of friends I know all think ' cheap means low value, expensive means good'.

When me and my mam just got here(AU) and passing by the bank advertising which says 6.0% p.a., I was interested in this ad, but my mam only said ' don't even think about it, it can't be safe'.

as we came from a place all the banks offering around 2.5% p.a. for a short term deposit, and my one year fixed term deposit only give me 2.7%p.a return. it was normal reaction from my mam.

Thus, the price of a product also reflects the value of the product. factors like competition, cost and legal$ ethical issue some time you can't tell just by the price without compete with others.