7 Class Hours

Instructor: Rex Bennett, Ph.D.

This course focuses on competitive strategies that banks can use to attain strategic, sustainable advantage and achieve superior profitability over the long-term in spite of competitor actions, customer/market shifts, and even the incredible industry and business environment changes of past year. Customer-driven differentiation is the essence of such strategies. This course will focus on competitive advantage strategies, the profit implications of market strategies, factors affecting customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction, creating and sustaining high value-added experiences and identifying and reducing the three major GAPS that prevent a bank from achieving exceptional financial performance. The emphasis is on specific, practical techniques that bank managers can use to achieve competitive advantage and increased profitability for their branches, departments, or bank.

Achieving a Sustainable Competitive Advantage emphasizes the importance of developing effective strategies to enhance advantage and profitability in the increasingly competitive and dynamic banking and financial industry.

Technical and financial skills remain essential components of successful bank management; but, increasingly, skills in strategic and competitive analysis, organizational and market assessment, differentiation, and delivery of high-value added products/service which create exceptional customer satisfaction are critical for bank success and even survival. The purpose of this course is to provide understanding of the profit implications of strategies and to develop skills in assessing and implementing these strategies for competitive advantage.

After successfully completing this course, students will be able to:

• Describe a sustainable competitive advantage and identify the most important components for achieving it
• Examine strategies for customer acquisition and retention via advertising, websites, and the use of social media
• Understand the factors that affect profitability and a bank’s ability to achieve superior profitability
• Recognize the negative impacts on profits associated with poor customer satisfaction and understand how to estimate these costs for your individual bank
• Use data gathering and models to estimate customer loss ratios and their impacts on profitability
• Understand and be able to measure and evaluate the three major GAPS that contribute to a bank’s failure to achieve customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, and superior profitability

Annual School Session

First Year Core Course

General Management & Technology Track