Masso Group

Banks are known to be financial institutions with initial functions of payment, deposit and loan. In competition, these activities are considered to be the vital part of banking business, which means a bank can survive only when people trust and make transactions with it. From that, a question rises “why customers choose this bank not that bank to deposit and make transactions?” The answer lies in brand and brand impact on decisions. A good banking brand is the trusted corporate brand by target customers. When financial market is fast developing and full of competition, brand is the decisive point in choosing bank for any individual or organization.

A strong brand in customer mind is built through a long procedure experiencing the quality, services, financial power and also the promises that banks promise to deliver. The development of banking system is gradually building core competency for Vietnam banks. Some banks have cared about branding, such as change logo, create vision, mission, build brand recognition system for all branches and branding policy, set up design teams to serve communication and brand related activities. However, until now, there is no bank that dominates the banking system with a unique brand. Some banks may be known in public such as Agribank is the bank for farmers and rural areas, or ACB, Sacombank are international trade banks, but the rest of 97 financial institutions with 38 Joint Stock banks and 47 foreign branches are still managing to fulfill their branding tasks. In general, Vietnam bank’s corporate branding is weak compared with foreign banks in the world.The deep reason is the under-evaluation of impact of branding. Banks spend much money in advertising, reduce interest rates and introduce promotion campaigns to attract customers but forget that customers will choose famous, trusted and reliable brands. Many banks don’t know, or don’t care, how to become trusted banks. A research shows that there is no Vietnam banks buy, do research or use research information of communication in their branding strategies. Even worse, there is no professional research about target customers of a specific bank.Given the weakness in branding of Vietnam banks, HSBC goes out as a successful lesson. In the 2009 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, HSBC is the top international banking brand. While many Western banks have suffered significant decreases in brand value as a result of the financial crisis, HSBC is the UK-based bank least affected as HSBC “was insulated by [its] strong presence in emerging markets”. The HSBC brand has been highly valued by consumers around the world. It has also taken top rankings recently in The Banker’s 1,000 Global Banking Brands 2009 and Brand Finance’s Global 500 Financial Brands Index 2009. In addition, HSBC also won The Asian Banker’s Best Brand Building Initiative (Asia Pacific) Award for its regional brand strategy and campaign in 2008. More specific, in Vietnam market, HSBC Bank is the leading foreign bank in brand equity on the back of quality services, strong understanding of customer needs and commitment to delivering. It came first in Synovate’s Regional Brand Tracking Study- 3Q7- Country Report in Vietnam when being no.1 in brand awareness, no.1 in bank consideration and preference and also no.1 in brand momentum and image. It can be said that HSBC has gained many successes in building and maintaining its brand in Vietnam market.Through the observation and research conduction of some famous cases, we have generated five important pillars in banks’ branding:

(1) positioning,

(2) building brand awareness,

(3) creating brand meaning,

(4) receiving brand responses and

(5) enhancing brand relationship.

Firstly, banks position themselves and show their images consistently in all communication: tariff, distribution channel and marketing campaigns.  Secondly, they create brand awareness through Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) including advertising, public relations, distribution network and events. Thirdly, banks give meanings to its corporate brand through tailored products, good customer services and staff benefits. Their brands become more meaningful when they participate in many social activities as a way to become social responsible enterprises. In banks, brand responses are taken care of: all customer complaints are recorded carefully by call center and relationship managers, analyzed and solved fully under Feedback policy. Banks treat feedback as a valuable source for it to improve. Another important thing is that banks retain customers with attractive Customer Relationship Management Programs. Regarding the Customer-based Brand Equity model of Keller (2003), a company executes four steps in building a strong brand: (1) create brand identity, (2) build a brand meaning, (3) elicit brand response and (4) forge brand relationships with customers. Keller arranges these steps as a continuous sequence, arguing the identity will be the foundation, which means that firstly company must ensure the identification of the brand with a specific product category or need. Then it can establish the meaning of the brand in the customer’s mind by strategically linking tangible and intangible brand associations with certain properties. It receives good customer responses only after having both brand identification and brand meaning. Finally, company converts these responses into an active, intense and loyal relationship between customers and the brand. Referencing from Keller’s logic, five themes are connected as follows:

 

The difference between this paper’s findings and theory is that Keller only focuses on the importance of brand equity. He states that these four steps are enough for a company to build a strong brand. However, in studied cases, a clear connection between internal strategy (positioning) and brand equity is found. Banks experience that without a right positioning, each step transfers different messages and results in an image that different from desired one. All efforts are then considered to be wasteful and useless. It allows us to conclude that how a company positions decides the success of it’s branding.

Moreover, while Keller just shows the relationship between steps, banks express the strong connection among these steps. All activities in creating awareness, building brand meaning, accepting response and keeping relationship must be carefully checked to ensure they are consistent with positioning. Any miscommunication can break the chain and destroy all efforts. From this, we come to conclusion that the bank should not only have a clear positioning but also connect all of its branding activities in a unique action plan.

As a result, banks’ strong corporate brand has become their competitive advantages when people easily accept its new retail products since they trust the corporate brand. Through a random in-depth interview with ten customers, most of them agree that brand is an important factor that affects their decisions. The most common impact is that brand makes customers (1) shorten their information searching time, (2) increase their tolerance for mistakes and problems and (3) decrease openness of consideration set. It also (4) increases the likeliness that customers will repurchase and be loyal to the brand.  The extent to which the reputation of the bank has impact is found to depend on 4 variables: homogeneity among banks, complexity in bank evaluation, nature of decisions, and perceived opportunity costs of changing among banks. The more homogenous banks are; the more difficult and important the decision is, and the more costly the changing is, the stronger impact brand has in customer’s decision making.  This paper hopes to prove the impact of branding on customer decision through which introduces banks a useful branding method from successful cases. For commercial banks that are trying to establish a sustainable brand name, these steps can be used as a guideline in their activities. For others with already strong brand, they can know how to take advantage of four elements that affects corporate branding impact to increase their influence on customers and gain more success in the future.

Information inquiry: These findings are generated from our observation and analysis of some successful foreign-owned banks in Vietnam’s retail banking industry. For more information, please contact Mr. Nguyen Trung Thang (thangnt@massogroup.com) or Ms. Bui Phuong Thao (phuongthaobui107@gmail.com).

 

(Source: Masso Consulting)