The impact of marketing communication tools on building brand equity

In today’s competitive business environment, banks operate in a severe rivalry due to various factors,   including globalisation, fast technological developments and homogeneous  nature  of  banks services.  For  this  reason,  building  valuable  brands  is crucialin differentiating banks and adding value to the banking services. The research problem  that  emerged  was:  investigating  the  major  bank  marketing  communication tools to  examinetheir  impact  on  building bank  brand  equity.  The  researcher  went about  in  achieving  this  purpose  by:  identifying  the  major  marketing  communication tools  used  by  banks  that  help  build  bank  brand  equity via the customer-based  brand equity(CBBE)dimensions  from  customers’  perspective;  and  testing  and  analysing the hypotheses in order to develop the final research model. In order for this purpose to  be  attained,  two  research  questions  were  answered:  what  are  the  major  bank marketing communication tools that help build bank brand equity? Which hypotheses regarding  the  impact  of  the  major  bank  marketing  communication  tools  on  building bank brand equity viathe CBBE dimensions are supported in this study? This  research  was  carried  out  in  the  Egyptian  banking  sector  from  the  customer perspective.  Mixed-method research  wasused.  The  first  phase  was  the  qualitative research  approach,  which  consists  of  conducting  and  analysing  semi-structured interviews.  These  interviews  were  carried  out  with fifteenbank  customers  based  on judgmental sampling technique. The purpose of these interviews were to identify the major bank marketing communication tools that help build bank brand equity via the CBBE  dimensions;  to  help  develop  a  proposed  conceptual  framework;  to  help develop  the  research  hypotheses;and  to  help  develop  the  intended  questionnaire survey.  According  to  the  findings,  advertising,  personal  selling  and  direct  marketing were  the  most  popular marketing  communicationtools  in  the  Egyptian  society  for banks. Once the needed insights were emerged, the second phase, the quantitative phase, was conducted. The researcher distributed and collected large-scale questionnaire survey. These  questionnaires  were  carried  out  with  465  bank  customers  based  on  a  quota sampling  technique.  These  questionnaires were  then  analysed  by  using  Structural Equation  Modelling  (SEM)  to  test  and  analyse  the  research  hypotheses;and  to  help develop  the  final  research  model.  Findings  showed  that  the  major  bank  marketing communication  tools  consist  of  personal  selling,  direct  marketing  and  advertising respectively  according  to  their  importanceon  building  bank  brand  equity.  Given  the fact  that  all  CBBE  dimensions  are  interrelated,  not  all  of  them  directly  impact  bank brand  equity.  Only  brand  loyalty  and  brand  perceived quality  were  found  to  have  a significant  positive  direct  effect  on  bank  brand  equity.When  conducting  this  study, the  researcher  faced  several  limitations.  The  data  were collected  only  in  Cairo  and Alexandria;   only   the   major   controllable   marketing   communication   tools   were assessed, and non-probability sampling was used.