Abstract:
Commercial Banks have undergone a radical change in the recent years. Once operating in
a non-competitive environment similar to utilities, they now face competitors not only
from within their own industry, but from a slew of rivals developing out of other financial
services. In order to keep their customer base, banks will have to continually improve and
strengthen marketing and outreach. As a result, banks are spending more and focusing
more on advertising and branding concepts. A very important factor of branding in
organizations is their unbreakable and long lasting relationship with the various facets of
consumer behaviour. Learning the meaning of brands - how they link to consumer
behavior, consumer culture, and distinguishing one brand from another - is important in
the development of brand loyalty. This is exactly what banks today need to understand and
take advantage of. Branding is a relatively new concept for the financial industry. Switching
costs appear to be prevalent in the use of banking services. The depositors find it costly to
close an account with their current bank to open an account in another bank. Customer
inertia is likely to be such that in order for a consumer to switch banks, at least one of the
following should occur: current service deteriorates relative to expected new service at
another bank enough to cover switching costs; large discount by another bank; some other
large expected gain from switching. Thus there is an increased to develop brand loyalty
among customers of a banking organization. For a company's brand vision to become a
reality, all employees must understand the brand vision and the company's promise and
share an active role in consistently applying the promise to everything they do
