A comparative analysis of strategic marketing planning adoption in Nigerian banking and insurance industry

Strategic marketing planning has become key success and survival factor in service organisations because its adoption contributes immensely to the achievement of key success and survival variables such as customer satisfaction, increased market share, improve productivity, financial performance and profitability, etc. The current economic reforms in Nigeria have opened up service organisations to private sector participants in order to reduce considerably service costs and thereby making them more competitive and development oriented. Data for this study were obtained from 589 respondents in selected banking and insurance firms through questionnaire administration. The differences between the two groups with respect to their approaches to strategic marketing planning were examined using ANOVA. The result of the investigation shows that strategic marketing planning is responsible for about 43.6% in the variation of the performance of the selected banks and 32.3% in the variation of the organizational performance of the selected insurance companies. This is an indication that there is significant relationship between strategic marketing planning and performance but that of banks is stronger than insurance companies. The paper recommends that banks and insurance organizations must commit adequate resources into strategic marketing planning activities in order to increase the current level of performance.Key words: strategic marketing planning, service industry,organisational performance, marketing mix, top management commitment