“THE RIGHT TIME” - SOCIAL TIME PERSPECTIVE FOR
DEVELOPING RETAIL BANKING SERVICES ONLINE
Johanna Ahola and Helena Ahola
University of Oulu, Department of Anthropology and Art Studies, Cultural Anthropology
Pentti Kaiteran katu 1, Oulu, Finland
Oulu University of Applied Sciences, School of Business and Information Management
Teuvo Pakkalan katu 19, Oulu, Finlan
Keywords: Case study, Internet marketing, Retail banking service, Time, Value creation.
Abstract: The anytime, ubiquitous, and interactive Internet creates customer value, and makes market offerings as
services. Service is a logic or a perspective to co-produce and co-create value with the customers. But if the
Internet promise is “anytime”, what is “the right time” for the customer and the service provider? Time is
usually understood as clock time, although it could be understood also from social and other perspectives. In
that way even more customer value and better service quality and productivity could be achieved. To
explore the idea of looking at time from other than only from resource perspective in service co-production
and value co-creation, an illustrative case study is provided within retail banking contexts. For banks the
Internet is one of the major marketing channels of their services. We propose that developing the retail
banking service concept from service logic and social time perspectives could add marketing effectiveness,
and provide a value-adding solution also to the “timing” problem.
1 INTRODUCTION
The aim of this paper is to provide a social time
perspective to services marketing on the Internet.
Creating customer value is a complex issue because
of customers’ participation and co-production of
value, and their expectations on ubiquitous services
and the service providers’ pressure of service
productivity.
The Internet is not anymore seen as technology
but as an environment consisting of people and as a
hub for various marketing operations. The
ubiquitous Internet with its functional, social,
emotional and epistemic dimensions of value have
impact on customers’ intention to use the medium
for shopping purposes (Ming-Sung Cheng, Wang
Ying-Chao Lin & Vivek, 2009). The Internet as a
marketing channel integrates marketing
communication with commercial transactions and
service delivery (Rowley, 2004).
When products (goods and services) are
marketed via the Internet, they are, in fact, services.
Service and value creation in services is a very
complicated thing. Gummesson (1991) concludes,
that “the marketing specialists of the marketing
department are seldom in the right place at the right
time with the right customer contacts.” Should this
be possible at the Internet time?
The Internet adds the availability of services.
Customers have an important role in value creation
and innovation of services. Customer involvement
aims to facilitate the generation and dissemination of
market intelligence and the organization-wide
responsiveness to it. Interaction is also the essence
of customer involvement. (Matthing, Sanden &
Edvardsson, 2004) Menor, Tatikonda and Sampson
(2002) explore the impact of the Internet on the
design and development of services, and suggest that
technology is changing the way services are both
delivered and designed, and that the role of
technology in developing new services is critical
requiring further exploration.
What is the” right time” when the Internet allows
anytime access to services? There are industries
which are time-dependent or which are, in fact;
based on time, such as banking. Time is, however,
usually understood as clock-time. Anthropologists
and sociologists emphasize that the essentially
Western chronological construct of time is but one
of the wide range of constructs of time (Jenkins,
209
Ahola J. and Ahola H. (2009).
“THE RIGHT TIME” - SOCIAL TIME PERSPECTIVE FOR DEVELOPING RETAIL BANKING SERVICES ONLINE.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business, pages 209-214
DOI: 10.5220/0002190402090214
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

2002). Particularly the purchase of financial services
suffers from a lack of temporal attention and
perspective (Gibbs (1998, 997). Furthermore,
Turnbull (2004) points out that in organization
studies there is a gap in time-related research.
2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The financial sector (banking) is one of the business
areas that has been most affected by the internet,
and, for example, the way in which financial
institutions interrelate with their customers
(Flavia´n, Guinalı´u & Torres, 2006). Durkin,
Jennings, Mulholland & Worthington (2008) also
emphasize the increasing role of the Internet in retail
banking, because it can “serve to reduce costs and
often improve service reliability and increase
marketing effectiveness.” Still no research has been
done on social or other than clock-time perspective
in value creation of banking services. We look for an
answer to the main research question: How can
value be created in marketing retail banking services
by understanding time also from other than clock-
time perspective?
The research sub-questions are:
1. What is service and how value is created
in services according to the recent service marketing
research?
2. What kind of time dimensions are
suggested besides clock time?
3. How can the time-critical points in retail
banking services be identified?
4. How to create time-sensitive service
concepts in retail banking taking into account the
Internet marketing environment?
The first two research questions will be answered
by utilizing service marketing and time theories, and
the last two by doing a case study of a service
concept in a retail bank.
3 RESEARCH STRATEGY AND
METHODOLOGY
An explorative single case study of developing
service concepts was done in a Finnish retail bank.
Based on the recent service and time theories
propositions are made for understanding time in
banking service contexts. The case study strategy
was chosen to illustrate the service concept and
potential critical time-dependent points in real-life
retail banking contexts. The case is a typical case of
a banking service concept. The analysis is based on
triangulated data. Multiple sources of evidence were
used, such as unobtrusive documents (public and
internal reports), archival records, direct observation
in seminars, participant observation during
development projects (notes and research diary), and
physical artefacts to corroborate the findings. The
authors have closely observed the development of
online retail banking with professional interest since
2000. Besides, the first author has worked within
banking business since 2001, and currently works at
the case bank as Development Manager in projects
related to customer service, customer relationship
management and “products”. Data particularly for
this case study has been obtained from the 1
st
of
September to the end of December, 2008. In
addition, the first author completed an academic
course on relationship marketing offered by Kataja
Organization of the universities in Finland. During
that course the service research was very thoroughly
studied.
The theory of service and the construct of service
concept, the social time construct and the timescape
framework guided the data collection process, and
served as the analytic strategy and the logic to link
the data to the research propositions, and to interpret
the findings. The units of analysis are the elements
of the banking service concept (in particular, the
service operation). Analysis of the case study
evidence was done according to the study questions.
The facts presented come from convergence of
multiple sources of the banking case evidence.
4 THE SERVICE CONCEPT AND
VALUE CREATION
Grönroos (2006) discusses services and service
logic, and the theory of value creation. Based on the
Nordic School view, services can be defined as
processes that consist of a set of activities which
take place in interactions between a customer and
people, goods and other physical resources, systems
and/or infrastructures representing the service
provider and possibly involving other customers,
which aim at solving customers’ problems. The
issue is how value is created through service.
Grönroos (2006) in his article provides a
fundamental theoretical knowledge base of service
logic for marketing. Following his idea of a service
logic and the value-in-use notion value creation
includes three phases (for services as well as for
goods): value facilitation, value co-creation and
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value creation. Also Edvardsson, Gustafsson and
Roos (2005, 118) conclude in their recent study that
‘Service is a perspective on value creation rather
than a category of market offerings’. In their
analysis, perspective seems to mean a way of
thinking, or a ‘logic’. Hence, services are value-
supporting processes. Thus service logic means that
the firm facilitates processes that support customers’
value creation. Due to the customers’ involvement in
these interactive processes, firms and customers are
co-producers of the service and co-creators of value.
Instead of including only the use of the marketed
product itself, consumption also encompasses all
elements, physical objects such as goods,
information, people-to-people encounters,
encounters with systems and infrastructures and
possible interactions with other customers that
together have an impact on customers’ value
creation. If consumption is viewed in this way, there
will be both theoretical and empirical challenges
ahead in marketing. The more content there is in the
customer interface, the more complicated it probably
is for the firm to manage the whole value-creating
process. Taking a value-in-use perspective, the
marketer has to try to carefully design and manage
as many elements of the interface as possible.
In the empirical business context of value
creation a service concept is needed. Edvardsson and
Olsson (1996) have defined service concept as
“detailed description of what is to be done for the
customer (what needs and wishes are to be satisfied)
and how this is achieved”. These definitions refer to
both the customer and the service provider points of
view. Goldstein et al. (2002) exemplifies the service
concept as “service in the mind” which is the
customer’s and the service provider’s expectation of
what service should be. It is a foundation for
developing marketing content (“what”) and
operational content (“how”) of a service. Service
concept helps to mediate between customer needs
and the organization’s strategic intent, and includes
the following elements (Clark et al., 2000 and
Johnston and Clark, 2001): 1) Service operation: the
way in which service is delivered 2) service
experience: the customer’s direct experience of the
service 3) service outcome: the benefits and results
of the service for the customer 4) value of the
service: the benefits the customer perceives as
inherent in the service weighted against the costs of
the service. (Figure 1).
The elements of
the service concept
the processes of
the service concept
Service operation the process of service
operation
Service experience the process of value co-
creation
Service outcome the process of co-
production
Value of the service the process of value
assessment
Figure 1: The elements of the service concept.
Proposition 1. According to the recent service
marketing theories service is a logic or perspective, a
process and value is created in co-production of
services. The definition of service refers to time as
the focus is on process and interaction; service is
thus “time dependent”. The processes consist of
actions and things that follow each other and vary in
their duration. Interactions that occur between
parties can be real-time or delayed. To
operationalize service the construct of service
concept is needed. Because the customer and the
service provider co-create value, time is not only
added value for the customer, but the “right timing”
is critical for the whole service concept, and the
time-critical points in the process should be
identified.
5 THEORIES OF TIME
Anthropologists and sociologists emphasize that the
essentially Western chronological construct of time
is but one of the wide range of constructs of time.
Time in general, in philosophy, represents two basic
ideas that are “duration” and “succession”
(Khatchadourian, 1961). Succession is the concept
that one event can be perceived to follow another.
Duration is the interval between successive events.
Social time consists of “collective
representations” that derive from and reflect the
groupings and varied “rhythms” in life. Calenderic
systems arise from social differentiation and a
widening area of social interaction (Munn, 1992).
Turnbull (2004) applies Jenkins’ (2002) theory of
social time in studies of time management in
working life of leaders. Researchers have identified
five key aspects of the time concept to study
marketing strategies in a global context (Harvey &
Novicevic, 2001; Harvey et al., 2008). These aspects
are: The nature of time (real or epiphenomenal,
experience of time (objective or subjective), clock vs
social time, time flow (novel, cyclical, or
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211

punctuated), time structure (discrete, continuous, or
epochal time, and temporal referent point (i.e. past,
present, or future).
Harvey & Novicevic (2001) developed a
construct of timescape based on social time.
Timescape is a strategic construct that can be
decomposed into seven elements useful in
visualization of time. These are time frame, tempo,
temporality, synchronization, sequence, pauses, and
the ubiquity of time. Timeframe means that people
prefer to engage in two or more tasks or events
simultaneously. Tempo is the perceived rhythm or
rate of time held by an observer. Temporality is the
concept of the limited durability of “things”.
Synchronization is the degree to which events are
coordinated relative to a concept of time. Sequence
is a structured pattern of events that are tied together
through time. Pauses mean the occurrence and
duration of time intervals between events. Ubiquity
of time is the ever present nature of time and the
resulting impact of time on marketing
events/strategies. (Harvey et al. 2008)
Proposition 2. Time is a complex phenomenon with
many dimensions. Some key aspects of the time
concept relate to social time, such as time frame,
tempo, temporality, synchronization, sequence,
pauses, and the ubiquity of time. The timescape
framework based on social time could be useful also
as a strategic construct in visualization of time in
banking. Understanding “time” from social time
perspective could add customer value, as the
ubiquitous Internet creates expectations of the
availability of services anytime.
6 CASE OF A SERVICE
CONCEPT AND TIME
The purpose of this case study is to identify the
time-critical points in a retail banking service
concept, and to illustrate how time-sensitive service
concepts could be created within retail banking, in
particular, in the ubiquitous Internet marketing
environment.
The bank in focus is a Finnish retail bank. The
bank group is comprised of independent member
cooperative banks and the group’s central institution.
The member banks throughout Finland offer full
range of banking services and promote the economic
welfare of the people and enterprises in their region.
The central bank offers technical solutions, builds
visions and solutions to support the local bank’s
business, and acts as a service center for its local
member banks, in particular, in terms of information
systems and customer relationship management
strategies.
The banking service concept consists of service
operation, experience, outcome, and value. The
focus is on the service operation with its different
elements. From the bank’s point of view criteria or
perspectives for the criticality of time are self-
service, customer service, and the service product
itself. These are selected as perspectives because
these can be understood as service, how it appears to
a customer. They include individual “concepts”
themselves but at the same time these are very much
dependent on each other.
The service operation of the retail banking
service concept developed above is analysed using
the construct of timescape. The seven elements of it
are time frame, tempo, temporality, synchronization,
sequence, pauses, and the ubiquity of time, and they
are analyzed from the bank’s time-critical
perspectives of self-service, customer service, and
the service product (Figure 2).
In the banking service operation, time frame is
critical from self-service, customer service and
service product viewpoints. In self-service,
customers can at the same time obtain information
from many sources or send applications to several
service providers. In customer service, a bank teller
may have tools that allow him to acquire
information from many sources via different devices
(e.g. using chat in order to consult colleagues).
Similarly, customers are usually provided with two
or more services at the same time, such as long-term
savings besides home loans.
Tempo refers to rhythm e.g. in the immediate
interaction within the customer service. Customers
can get bored if service is too slow; on the other
hand, if it is too fast, they might get confused. In
self-service customers may proceed in their own
rhythm. Also, in the service product, tempo is not
particularly critical, because there is no immediate
interaction going on.
Temporality in the banking service concept is
most critical in customer service considering how
much is takes customers’ and the service provider’s
time. Temporality might not be so relevant in self-
service, rather it could be important in service
outcome (i.e. how long customer is committed to a
service product).
Synchronization is important in customer
service in two ways: first, service needs to be
available in synchronization with the customer
situation, secondly, asynchronization allows more
freedom to find out a solution to a customer’s
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situation. Both participants need not be present at the
same time. This is closely related to self-service, as
the customer is allowed to start service on his own
and wait for the response from the service provider.
In the service product case, consideration is needed
in recommending other services at the same time for
the customer.
Sequence emphasizes the process nature of
service as phases are following each other. Customer
service situation can be structured in a way that it is
understandable and interesting from the customer
point of view and leads to the expected outcome. In
self-service sequence is also critical, because the
customer has to proceed on his own. If service
product consists of modules, sequence could then be
relevant.
Pauses are relevant in customer service and self-
service. Pauses might be needed for many reasons
such as understanding the attributes of the service.
Pauses can also be irritating. Pauses need to be
planned.
Ubiquity of time is particularly relevant in self-
service, because customers prefer banking
independent on time and place. However, customer
service has a role in supporting customers and
responding to different customer situations needed
ubiquitously. In service product, ubiquity might be
relevant also in other service concept elements than
service operation.
Time-critical
points in service
operation
Self-
service
Customer
service
Product
Time frame
“polychronic”
H H H
Tempo
“rhythm”
M H -L
Temporality
“durability”
L H M
Synchronization
“coordination”
L H M
Sequence
“tied together”
H H M
Pauses “between
events”
H H L
Ubiquity of time
“ever present”
H M M
H= high importance, M= medium importance, L=
low importance
Figure 2: The service operation in the banking service
concept and the time-critical points.
Proposition 3. The time-critical points in retail
banking service operation have been identified from
the bank’s point of view. They are self-service,
customer service, and the service product itself. The
time dimensions of highest importance in the service
operation element of the service concept are in self-
service and customer service.
Proposition 4. Time-sensitive service concepts in
retail banking can be created by analyzing the
elements of the service concept and estimating the
importance of various time dimensions in each of
them. Using the developed timescape all the
elements of different service concepts could be
analysed, and social time sensitive banking services
could be created.
7 DISCUSSION
We have developed propositions for social time
sensitive retail banking services. A retail banking
service is a process and value is created in co-
production with the customers, and that service is
“time dependent”. To operationalize service the
construct of service concept is needed. In co-
creation of value, time is not only added value for
the customer, but the “right timing” is critical for the
whole service concept, and the time-critical points in
the process should be identified. Time is a complex
phenomenon with many dimensions, but the concept
of social time and timescape framework can be
applied as a strategic construct of time.
The time-critical points in retail banking service
operation have been identified. They are self-
service, customer service, and the service product
itself. Time-sensitive service concepts in retail
banking can be created by analyzing the elements of
the service concept and estimating the importance of
various time dimensions. In the analysis of the
service operation part of the service concept the
time-critical points were self-service and customer
service. Using the developed timescape all the
elements of different service concepts could be
analyzed, and social time sensitive banking services
could be created. The Internet will perhaps in the
future offer tools for banks to provide services in
real time, and multiple time perspectives of
customers can be taken into account efficiently also
from the bank’s point of view.
This study contributes to services marketing
theory by developing a model for marketing time-
critical banking services, and to social time theories
by offering a service marketing perspective applied
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213

in the banking business. Managers could use this
tool in planning service concepts from a more
multifaceted perspective rather than merely focus on
clock time. In fact, the time perspective should be
embedded in the service process. This requires
development of service attributes, the service
process and systems support.
Further research is suggested to study time in the
other elements of the service concept. These are the
service experience, outcome and value. Furthermore,
as this case study was based on expected customer
value and the bank’s point of view, the real
expectations of the customers should be empirically
studied. By inductive case studies the value-creating
process including value facilitation, co-creation and
value creation, or value-supporting process could be
described and understood. Then a new role for
marketers of services as instructors, coaches,
advisers on the ubiquitous Internet could be
identified and created.
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