Entrepreneurship, innovation, incumbency in Vietnam's turbulent financial sector: bank marketing and strategy implications for private sector challengers

Abstract

Incumbency in financial services is a significant barrier to entry for small players in any market, and nowhere is this hurdle more significant than in Southeast Asian Transition Economies, where newly created private sector banks compete with their well established, state-owned rivals. Based on the literature on international bank marketing, incumbency can be overcome by entrepreneurial bankers through astute management of bank marketing strategy, coupled with innovations to better share knowledge about customers. This exploratory study, undertaken in Vietnam’s turbulent financial marketplace, combines empathic design and semi-structured interview research techniques used in financial services research to provide guidance for bank marketing strategy. Results suggest that a combination of factors create market orientation among Vietnamese private sector and entrepreneurial “joint stock banks4”, who are less well capitalized than their state owned competitors. Only through employing innovations, technology and market training can entrepreneurs hope to compete against incumbent government banks, multinational players, and other local rivals. Analyses of marketing orientation and organizational design of sales and marketing functions suggest the need for closer integration between marketing and risk management systems, technologies, procedures and controls, and integration of new innovations to compete effectively in the Vietnamese marketplace.