Throughout the 1980s, information technology gained increasing importance within commercial banks. There have also been turbulent competitive developments in the retail banking market caused by non-banks making inroads into traditional banking business. This research examines whether there is a direct correlation between significant changes in the market environment of commercial banks and significant changes in the banks' information technology strategy. The research develops an understanding of this complex relationship in two distinct retail banking markets, the USA and Germany, and in two steps. The first is a thorough literature analysis of the factors influencing the model, the market-entries of selected non-bank competitors, and banks' general strategic response. The second is a qualitative research on the banks' strategic response, in particular in terms of information technology. The change of the IT strategy is measured by the investments made by banks in information technology. The research finds that commercial banks responded with a time lag of 1 to 1.5 years to market-entries of a substantial competitive and strategic scale. They spent more than twenty percent of their information technology budget devoted to information technology investments in the retail banking function of their institution, to respond to the market-entry. Thus, a direct correlation seems to exist.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:661645 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Schulz, Jorg |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/20771 |
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