This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the International Journal of Bank Marketing is split into five sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing Strategy and PR; Customer Service; Sales and Promotion; Product Development; Information Technology Strategies.

You cannot pick up a magazine or newspaper or turn on the TV without hearing something about the information superhighway, telecommunications companies or cable TV. Intriguing pilot projects and apparent success stories capture the attention of executives in all manner of industries. Success is not necessarily assured, however. The average annual revenue earned by Internet vendors has been less than $25,000. Other projects such as Mecklermedia's shared corporate World Wide Web server and several interactive television trials appear to have fizzled out. Nonetheless, the information superhighway does have the ability to create and destroy business value on a scale that could rock the world's largest and most successful companies.

Effective communication and information gathering is essential if change is to take place, and in article AH43 (p. 34) the subject of "skip level meetings" is discussed in detail. This style of information gathering again reiterates the theme of trust between employer and employee, and demonstrates how, once this trust has been established, a manager can learn much about the organization by merely skipping one or two layers of management and hearing straight from the horse's mouth.Article AB82 (p. 34) follows the same theme of communication and takes a look at that most prolific of communication systems: the grapevine. Whether we are the transmitter or the recipient of information, we are all at some time or other a part of this system.What the article suggests is a number of ways in which the grapevine can be managed to the best advantage in order to enhance an organization's quality productivity. The solution has to be to provide good, official communications to combat grapevine communications, removing as much secrecy as possible from an organization's operations. Trust and understanding through knowledge, at every level, must be the way forward.

That someone can make us feel good is a quality in itself. There has been much talk within British government circles, for example, about “the feelgood” factor, which is constantly reminding us that it is just around the corner! Whether or not we can believe in this is another matter but it certainly displays an awareness that making other people feel good can also have positive benefits for ourselves. How this can be achieved will differ depending on our particular line of business. Having a good‐quality product does not in itself guarantee success as service quality must also be taken into account. This is where the feel‐good factor comes into play. It is all very well, for example, going to a restaurant to have a top‐class meal (in that the food was good), only to have it thrown at you. Quality, therefore, must not be seen as a separate entity, but more as a package deal. Service quality is important if you wish to retain your customer base as acquiring new customers can be both time‐consuming and costly. It quite often takes very little apart from good manners to keep customer loyalty as in the case of the restaurant. Other factors can, however, start creeping into the framework such as efficiency, timeliness and good communication. Is there, for example, a time limit on how long you can reasonably be expected to wait for your meal before it arrives at the table, and if there is a delay is this communicated to you? In other words, we all have expectations as to what is acceptable and what is not. The clever part is for the organization to learn by what criteria the customer judges its service quality performance.

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