Study of attributes that form marketing image of financial institution

Abstract

Globalisation and convergence of different products force companies to compete through positive images, not prices or product attributes. Several types of image are discussed in academic literature: corporate image, brand image, external, internal, etc. Kotler and Barich (1991) suggest distinguishing a new image type – marketing image. Research objective of this paper is to identify empirically which attributes that form bank-marketing image have the highest value for bank customers. The Conjoint analysis method was chosen for the empirical study. Although literature does not provide any possible application of Conjoint analysis method in the field of financial institution investigation, this method was utilised when scrutinizing shop image (Barich and Srinivan, 1993). Thus, it is expected that the Conjoint analysis method could be utilised when exploring bank marketing image. During the study 80 individual Lithuanian bank customers and 10 bank top level and middle level managers were interviewed. On the basis of the results of earlier studies conducted, five main attributes forming marketing image were distinguished. Every attribute was characterised within three levels: bad, medium, and good. The importance of attributes for bank clients was divided into the following categories: service quality (41%), prices of services (26%), convenience, availability (17%), variety of services (13%) as well as bank exterior and interior (3%); however, the value of the attribute level is more important for the marketing image analysis. Having established the utility of the image attribute level for consumers, material and human resources, every financial institution has to find its ways of transferring identified attributes from one level to a higher one.