Service elimination decision‐making: The identification of financial services as candidates for elimination

Despite the importance of the ability of service firms to rationalise their service ranges in today's competitive environment, the area of service elimination decision‐making is one of the least researched in the literature on services marketing. Responding to this knowledge gap, this paper reports part of the findings of a broader exploratory investigation into the service elimination process in the British financial services sector. In detail, the paper presents qualitative and quantitative empirical evidence on the way in which British financial institutions audit their service range in order to identify financial services as candidates for elimination. The evidence showed that the British financial institutions studied follow a periodically conducted service range auditing process, which is often documented and computer‐aided. The audit is operationalised by a set of financial and non‐financial audit criteria (performance dimensions). The evidence also showed that the service range auditing process is not static but dynamic. As such, the relative importance of the audit criteria used varies in relation to service‐specific, organisational and environmental variables, such as type of financial service, business strategy pursued overall, degree of market orientation, intensity of competition, intensity of legislation and rhythm of technological change.