One of the key battles for financial services firms is how to reduce the defection rate of its customer base, or in other words, how to retain customers. Customer defection is costly to firms as not only do they have to replace the defecting customer with a new customer, and thus have acquisition costs, but also the new customer is usually more costly to service due to the set-up costs. Thus there has been an increasing focus on retention marketing in the past decade in an effort to reduce customer defection rates. A concept linked to customer defection is customer vulnerability, which is the likelihood of the customer defecting at a future point in time. This is a cognitive construct that provides an initial verbal indicator of likely subsequent buying behaviour.

A key market-based asset for the firm is the current customer base. Current customers are also a primary target market for any mass media marketing activities, whether the marketing manager intends them to be or not, in that current customers are more likely to notice the brand’s marketing communications than are non-customers. Therefore, it would seem to be good marketing practice to ensure that positioning choices are attributes that are linked to lower customer vulnerability. This provides validity to the approach taken in this research which is to use the link between positioning attribute association and customer vulnerability to assess the comparative performance of positioning attributes.

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Spiralling rates of change in markets and market forces compounded by a statutory responsibility to the Personal Investment Authority (PIA) require considered strategic approaches. Providing CPD on the job is both time-consuming and costly. Not being able to evaluate and thereby formally to recognise the benefits of CPD activity is, therefore, problematic. In addition, there is a growing awareness by individuals, of the need to participate in CPD-related activity. These reasons include becoming more marketable, career development and enhancing standing in the workplace. This paper reviews an established CPD scheme and seeks to identify the problems and benefits of participation for the organisation and the individual.

At a business performance level it was found that CPD was able to support an improved, flexible response to changing business needs. Yet given its potential it does not appear as a formal part of the organisation’s strategic approach to business or people development. The conclusions are that because of the unstructured nature of CPD-related activities it is difficult to evaluate effectively and consequently is underappreciated within the organisation. Neither is attributing improvements in performance to CPD straightforward. Nevertheless, because participants perceive clear benefits it is highly valued.

The paper goes on to suggest that the mandatory approach adopted by the PIA is not necessarily in step with the needs of the organisations it seeks to serve in a strategic people management sense and that an integrated approach to CPD by employing organisations should be encouraged. The purpose would be to provide greater clarity of the beneficial outcomes accruing to the individual and organisation and thereby to encourage a greater commitment to voluntary participation.

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