How to Measure Your Bank's Personality: Some Insights from Canada

Abstract

If meaningful market plans are to be made and strategies developed to implement them, international banks mut have a comprehensive knowledge of customers' attitudes, perceptions of the various services they offer, and the image which customers have of them. Following preliminary data gathering, sampling and a pilot study, data were gathered by means of personal interviews with a sample of 240 Royal Bank of Canada customers and 24 branch managers and/or employees during November 1982 in the town of Halifax. The research supports the hypothesis that the Royal Bank's overall advertising policy in Halifax properly reflects the attributes which are important to the community's bank market. It also supports the hypothesis that the corporate identity of the bank is consistent with the community's image of the bank. The hypothesis that the bank's perception of the ideal bank is the same as that of the market is not accepted.