BUILDING CORPORATE BRANDING THROUGH INTERNAL MARKETING: THE CASE OF UK RETAIL BANKS

ByIoanna Papasolomou &Demetris Vrontis

BACKGROUND

• INTERNAL MARKETING• BRANDING• INTERNAL MARKETING & BRANDING

INTERNAL MARKETING• Internal Marketing is a type of Marketing that is directed at

the people inside the company.• Internal Marketing is the task of hiring, training and

motivating employees in order to serve the customers in a far more better way.

• The aim of internal marketing is to treat the employees as a customer group. Great organizations give even the lowest workers a good feeling.

• Internal Marketing must precede External Marketing. As it makes no sense to provide excellent service before the company’s staff is ready to provide it.

• Internal Marketing helps the Front-line employees in delivering extraordinary services to their customers

INTERNAL MARKETING (Cont..)

• Through Internal Marketing the employees become skillful enough to serve the customers well.

• Internal Marketing helps non marketing staffs to learn and be able to perform their tasks in a marketing-like manner.

• Internal Marketing improves customers retention and individual employee development.

BRANDING

• Brand is a name or symbol that is commonly known to identify a company or it’s products and separate them from the competition.

• A well-known brand is generally regarded as one that people will recognize, often even if they do not know about the company or its products/services.

• Companies must work hard to build brands. David Ogilvy states: “Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and determination to create a brand.”

• The main benefit of branding is that customers are much more likely to remember your business. A strong brand name and logo/image helps to keep your company image in the mind of your potential customers.

BRANDING (Cont..)

• A strong brand projects an image of quality in your business, many people see the brand as a part of a product or service that helps to show its quality and value. If you can create effective branding, then over time the image of quality in your business will usually go up

• A strong brand creates an image of an established business that has been around for long enough to become well known. A branded business is more likely to be seen as experienced in their products or services.

• A strong brand allows companies to link together several different products or ranges. companies can put your brand name on every product or service they sell, meaning that customers for one product will be more likely to buy another product from them.

• Companies can also create separate brand names for their product ranges, allowing people to see their brand name, and then use the range brand name to work out what they wish to buy.

INTERNAL MARKETING & BRANDING

• To have a strong, unbeatable brand, we need employees who understand it and are motivated to live it daily.

• To develop that workforce, we need an employee communication program known as Internal Marketing.

• As stated earlier “It’s the delivery that carries greater importance, and not the provision”.

• Think of employees as the market and the brand as the message. Then communicate that message in an engaging, motivating, inspiring way.

BUILDING CORPORATE BRANDING THROUGH INTERNAL MARKETING

THE CASE OF UK RETAIL BANK INDUSTRY

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

• This study investigates the way the UK retail banking industry has tried to build and sustain a strong brand with the help of INTERNAL MARKETING program.

• This study shed light on the themes of branding in the financial services industry and ought to show a relationship between Internal Marketing and Branding.

METHODOLOGY

• The study was qualitative and exploratory in nature.

• Data was collected by carrying out in-depth qualitative interviews with organizational members working in different positions within 35 business units that represented 7 different UK retail banking organizations.

BRAND BUILDING ACTIVITIES FOR FMCG V/S FINANCIAL SERVICES

Levy (1996) suggested five effective ways of differentiating financial services brands from FMCG brands.

1. Product definition: Financial services brands are not well defined as the FMCG brands.

BRAND BUILDING ACTIVITIES FOR FMCG V/S FINANCIAL SERVICES (Cont..)

2. Brand differentiation: FMCG marketers try to differentiate their brands and avoid launching “me-to” generic products. The marketers in financial services often not compete with competitor’s product to fill gaps in their portfolio.

BRAND BUILDING ACTIVITIES FOR FMCG V/S FINANCIAL SERVICES (Cont..)

3. Consumer Motivation: In FMCG, consumer loyalty is hard to win and retain, but in financial services the consumers are reluctant to switch.

BRAND BUILDING ACTIVITIES FOR FMCG V/S FINANCIAL SERVICES (Cont..)

4. Measurement of Brand strength: Assessing propensity to repurchase is a good measure of brand loyalty in FMCG, in financial services the concept of repeat purchase is less meaningful and it needs to be measured over years.

BRAND BUILDING ACTIVITIES FOR FMCG V/S FINANCIAL SERVICES (Cont..)

5. Product features: Extra features can attract FMCG customers but extra features in financial services can confuse an already reluctant customer.

IM AS A MEANS FOR BUILDING STRONG CORPORATE BRAND

• Branding is usually described as a challenge for the financial services industry. Serious attention must be given to the role of staff played in producing and delivering the service.

• Gro¨nroos (1994) suggests that staff embody the service brand in the consumer’s eyes since in many cases the service staff is the only point of contact for the consumer.

IM AS A MEANS FOR BUILDING STRONG CORPORATE BRAND (Cont..)

• service corporations have realized the importance of encouraging their staff in enacting the corporate service brand and have developed IM programs for this purpose, for example, in the healthcare industry and the railway industry.

• The rationale for the adoption of IM is the increasing recognition of the importance of the employees’ role in the service industry.

IM AS A MEANS FOR BUILDING STRONG CORPORATE BRAND (Cont..)

• By treating employees as internal customers, one can ensure higher employee satisfaction. The logic of viewing employees as “internal customers” is that by satisfying the needs of internal customers, a firm should be in a better position to deliver the quality desired to satisfy external customers.

• The homogeneity and the heightened competition that characterizes the UK retail bank industry have led banks to recognize the need to adopt IM in order to achieve competitive differentiation by building a strong brand through an emphasis on customer and service orientation.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

• The success and failure of IM depends on the effective integration and implementation of the four IM elements. Which are:

1. Internal customers: Demonstrate a caring attitude aimed at motivating employees to be customer and service orientated.

2. Quality standards: set high standards of performance and equip employees in order to enable them to meet and exceed these standards of performance.

RESEARCH FINDINGS (Cont..)

3. Training & education: The training and education courses aim to help staff to understand the importance of striving to meet the internal service standards in their internal interactions as a prerequisite for achieving high quality customer service.

4. Rewards systems: Berry (1999, p. 174) states that employees who feel as part-owners of an organization are more willing to work towards sustaining the corporation’s success, as they have more to gain.

CONCLUSION

• The paper proposes that through proper implementation of IM, the problems related to branding of intangible offerings.

• UK retail banks have placed greater emphasis on IM in order to deliver the brand’s promise.

• The development of successful corporate service brands depends on the effective participation of employees whose attitude and behavior are fundamental to a high-quality delivery of service and customer satisfaction.

CONCLUSION (Cont..)

• IM through its emphasis on “internal customers” creates a people oriented culture that sets the foundation for building a strong corporate service brand.

• Despite the potential of using IM in order to strengthen the corporate brand its implementation can be problematic due to the fact that the process is a change mechanism and very often employees resist organizational change.

THE END….

Thank You.