The Pro Vice-Chancellor of the Ghana Communication Technology University, Professor Robert E. Hinson, has won an award for an Outstanding Paper in the 2022 Emerald Literati Awards. The award was granted on the basis of a co-authored article entitled ‘Marketing bank services to financially vulnerable customers: evidence from an emerging economy’ published in the International Journal of Bank Marketing.
The award-winning paper was lead-authored by Dr. Emmanuel Mogaji of the Department of Marketing, Events and Tourism, University of Greenwich, London, UK; and co-authored by Associate Professor Ogechi Adeola of the Lagos Business School; Associate Professor Nguyen Phong Nguyen of the School of Accounting at the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City; Dr. Arinze Christian Nwoba of the Department of Marketing, Events and Tourism, University of Greenwich, London, UK; and Dr. Taiwo Soetan of the School of Business, IT and Applied Arts, Red River College, Winnipeg, Canada.
The award-winning paper explored ways by which banks in Nigeria were marketing financial services to financially vulnerable customers. Using a multiple case-study approach, the paper found that Nigerian banks develop different product development portfolios, adopt innovative traditional marketing schemes and apply inclusive technologies to reach and extend services to the unbanked and financially vulnerable customers in society.
The paper went on to recommend that banks should focus on consumer engagement through the proactive development of technologies and employ innovative marketing methods. Customers’ banking experiences can be enhanced if banks communicate with and educate customers about technological modes of engagement. In addition, financial service transaction support and financial literacy education can assist banks in marketing their services to financially vulnerable customers, in mutually beneficial ways.
The 2022 award was the third Emerald Literati Research Excellence Award for Professor Robert E. Hinson, having won his first Emerati Highly Commended Paper Award in 2007 for a co-authored paper entitled ‘Corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspectives of leading firms in Ghana’ which was published in Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society.
Professor Hinson won another Emerati Outstanding Paper Award in 2009 for a co-authored paper entitled ‘B2b inter-organisational digitalisation strategies – toward an interaction-based approach’ published by the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.
Apart from the three Emerald Literati Research Excellence Awards, Professor Hinson has also won several research excellence awards. Ranked first out of 49,093 academics as the leading marketing scholar in Africa by the 2022 AD Scientific Index (https://www.adscientificindex.com/scientist/robert-e-hinson/89518), he also won a Best Paper Award for the International Marketing Track at the Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, which was held between 6 and 8th July 2010 at the Coventry University Business School, UK.
Professor Hinson, who until his new position as Pro Vice-Chancellor of the GCTU acted as Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic at the University of Kigali, in 2008 also won a Journal of African Business (Routledge, United Kingdom) Best Paper Award for a co-authored paper entitled ‘E-commerce in least developing countries: Summary evidence and implications’.
The letter announcing the 2022 Outstanding Paper Emerald Literati Award noted among others that:
“Your award-winning article has now been made freely available for 12 months, so make the most of this global recognition by sharing a link to your work with your networks and colleagues – it deserves to be seen!” – And the implication of this is that this article can be freely downloaded by practitioners and scholars alike.
It is the vision of the paper’s authors that it will light the path for banks across Africa to design customer-centric approaches for delighting their financially vulnerable customers. The 2022award-winning paper’s authors opine that banks need to better understand their customers through appropriate consumer engagement with technologies like mobile phones, USSD transactions and MMA transactions (Dwivedi et al., 2019) in order to develop a product that can appeal to them. The significant amount of data being generated and the increased use of mobile devices and USSD both present an opportunity for banks to introduce artificial intelligence into their services to better understand their current and prospective consumers (Cunneen et al., 2019).
