Corporate identity of Latvian commercial banks
Corporate identity of Latvian commercial banks

Summary/Abstract: Latvian banking industry has followed the path of rapid development like entire Latvian economy did in the last 20 years. Along with expansion and provision of financial services by Latvian banks to non-resident customers from foreign countries, each individual commercial bank has established specific positioning and corporate image within the local and international markets. Also, some banks have gone through corporate strategy and visual identity changes in order to adjust to the volatile market conditions and implemented up-to-date adjustments to their marketing communications with the target audience and markets in general. Corporate identity framework developed by Melewar and Jenkins (2002) is used as benchmark model to analyze the corporate identity formation of four largest Latvian commercial banks in terms of their assets (Latvian Association of Commercial Banks, 2011) – Swedbank, SEB, Nordea, Dnb Nord. Paper contains 5 figures. Hypothesis: there exist specific factors, which contribute to corporate identity formation within banking industry and which should be common for major commercial banking industry participants. Aim of the research: to explore the corporate identity formation in commercial bank industry by surveying commercial bank representatives. In order to test the research hypothesis the research has been split in several consecutive tasks: 1. Selected literature analysis on the corporate identity concept – review of corporate identity definitions and the latest research papers regarding corporate identity concept and related issues; 2. Semi-structured expert interviews with bank representatives to determine differences and similarities of different corporate identity formation based on corporate identity framework by Melewar and Jenkins. 3. Analysis of possible reasons that explain differences of corporate identity formation for the selected commercial banks. Research results show that main corporate identity dimensions are common for all researched Latvian commercial banks. However, the difference is in relative importance or the extent to which each of the dimensions is relevant for the respective bank.

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