SUBSTITUTING BANKING BRANCH OFFICES VIA C OMMERCE ON THE INTERNET WWW- HOW TO DESIGN APPROPRIATE IS FOR DIRECT BANKING/

The Internet/World Wide Web (WWW) offers due to its key features inter activity and multi-media support a broad potential for marketing in th e field of financial services. Presently however, this potential is on ly partially utilized w.r.t. product information and - recently - stan dard financial transactions. Generalizing on research project work wit h Advance Bank, a Munich based direct banking firm, we show in this er , how the WWW can play a crucial role in direct banking IS strategy: I t can support customer consulting w.r.t. complex banking products such as e.g. credit or leasing financing of private homes simultaneously t o and integrated with telephone communication. Thus it helps direct ba nking to compete with traditional banking branch offices also w.r.t. c onsultation-intensive products.