SOLUTIONSTO ENHANCE THE EFFECTIVENESSOF ADVERTISING ACTIVITIES:A CASE OF VIETNAMINTERNATIONAL BANK (VIB)

Basing on literature reviews, author identified fours aspects which were proved that they directly impact on the revenue of corporation including advertising activities, product innovati

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

ID: 22130035

SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG

Writing this thesis needed a long duration of hard working from the author and carefulinstructing from the team of Supervisor of International School of Business The thesishas been finished with the help of Ms Nguyen Thi Mai Trang - who has given us theuseful and excellent information about the way of identifying and solving problem inthesis We would like to give a special thank to Ms Mai Trang and other Supervisors inISB for their help, guidance throughout the process of making this thesis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I Executive summary 1

II The problem identification 2

2.1 Company introduction 2

2.2 Symptom and real problem 4

2.2.1 Business situation of VIB and other banks in recent years 5

2.2.2 The first in-depth interview 7

2.2.3 Possible reasons of low revenue of VIB 13

2.2.4 The most important problem: ineffective advertising activity 17

2.3 Cause and effect diagram 19

III Solutions 21

3.1 Alternative one: Enhancing advertising activities for VIB 23

3.1.1 Advertising on LCD screen in elevators 25

3.1.2 Advertising on print media 27

3.1.3 Advertising on television 30

3.2 Alternative two: Electronic word of mouth 32

3.2.1 Email 33

3.2.2 Social media 35

3.3 Choosing best solution for VIB 39

IV Implementation 41

V Conclusion 45

6.1.1 Primary data 46

6.1.2 Secondary data 48

6.2 Result of the first qualitative research 50

6.2.1 Interview five current customers of VIB 50

6.2.2 Interview five customers of other banks 51

6.2.3 The common theme of the first in-depth interview 63

6.3 Result of the second in-depth interview on five customers 64

Reference 85

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Chartered Capital of the four banks in 2015 5

Table 2 Revenue from business activities of four banks in Viet Nam in the past three years 6

Table 3 List of studies investigated the antecedents of revenue 7

Table 4 List of studies investigated factors affecting effectiveness of advertising 21

Table 5 Expected cost of advertising on printed media and LCD in 2016 28

Table 6 Expected cost of advertising on television in 2016 31

Table 7 List of sources of secondary data 49

Table 8 The answers of current customers of VIB in the first in-depth interview 50

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Revenue from business activities of four banks in Viet Nam in the past three

years 6

Figure 2 Cause and effect diagram of Low revenue 20

SOLUTIONS TO ENHANCE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ADVERTISING

ACTIVITIES: A CASE OF VIETNAM INTERNATIONAL BANK (VIB)

I Executive summary

The thesis is to solve problem of insufficiency in advertising activities of VIB The symptom inVIB at present is low revenue in recent years when comparing the level of revenue of VIB inrecent years with three other banks that have the same chartered capital

Basing on literature reviews, author identified fours aspects which were proved that they

directly impact on the revenue of corporation including advertising activities, product

innovation, product quality and capability of staff To investigate these aspects, author usedresults of the in-depth interviews and secondary data from VIB The results showed that there

is no problem with product innovation, product quality and capability of staff of VIB Withadvertising activities, VIB is still launching many new programs but the customers cannotcatch information as well as pay more attention to them Basing on literature review, result ofthe in-depth interview, secondary data from VIB and the current situation of the bank, theauthor identified that advertising activity is the main problem that leads to the low revenue ofVIB Solutions of problem were proposed basing on four aspects They include literature

review, current situation of VIB, secondary data from many sources, opinions of customersthrough the second in-depth interview There are two main solutions which are proposed Infirst solution, there are three small solutions and the second solution includes two small

solutions Therefore there are totally five small solutions but there are four small solutions thatwill be chosen basing on the analysis of their advantages and disadvantages To be more

specific, the whole process of identifying and solving problem is presented clearly in the nextparts

II Problem identification

2.1 Company introduction

According to Leung (2009), since 1990, Vietnamese banking system was divided into twosystems according to two levels, including Central Government banking and Commercial

banking system After establishing in 1990, banking industry has had a strong developing

speed Since 2007 to now, the rising speed of turnover in the whole industry is 19.47%, higherthree times than the rising speed of average GDP (2007 – 2014) of the whole Vietnamese

economy from 2007 About the industrial structure, Vietnam’s banking sector includes fourmajors and one minor state-owned commercial bank (SOCB), thirty-one joint stock banks(JSBs), six joint venture banks and six 100 per cent-owned foreign banks

From the day of becoming the official member of World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2007, anew era of opportunity and challenge is opened for the Vietnamese economy as well as theother fields According to the commitment of joining WTO, the foreign trading banks are

established with 100% foreign capital at Viet Nam Vietnam International Commercial Joint

1996 Before the opportunity and challenge of the international integration, VIB has

continuously made efforts and improved the product quality in each filed of operation Goingthrough eighteen years of operation and development, now VIB has become one of the leadingcommercial joint stock banks at Viet Nam VIB‘s area operations has spread on several

diversified products For customers who are individuals, VIB provides products regarding tosaving, loans, insurance, etc For customers who are organizations, VIB focuses on offering theproducts of cash management, e-banking, loans, trade finance, etc These information above aretaken from VIB website On this research, the author focuses on both the customers who areindividuals and organizations to analyze and study about the problems that VIB is facing

To increase the effectiveness in every fields of its operation, VIB has performed and followedthe aim of becoming the most innovative and customer-centric bank of Vietnam as the visionfor its whole system VIB also defined the missions separately for each objects For customerswho are individuals and organizations, VIB follows the way of providing innovative, customer-centric solutions to satisfy their needs For employees, VIB improves and encourages the highperformance culture, entrepreneurship and openness in the work environment For

shareholders, the bank provides sustainable and attractive returns to their shareholders and alsosupport development for community Besides, VIB also concentrates on the five main corevalues including customer focus, excellence, honesty, teamwork and discipline

In most banks, the main departments include Sales, Marketing, Investment, Human Resources,Accounting, Risk Management, Transaction, etc Marketing and Brand Department often take

the responsibility of accessing customers and advertising to them so many people can know thebank’s brand name and use its products The main tasks of Marketing team in banking embraceplanning for credit card marketing and branding objective, expanding cooperation with

merchants to develop and advertising campaigns, analyzing market trends and recommendchanges to card marketing and business development strategy, developing and leading

marketing team, execution new concepts, business models, channels, partners to position

business as innovator and leader, collaborating with sales to develop strategic partnership

activities and implement the execution, working with advertising, sales and departments andbranches to generate interest in product, etc Advertising activity is also the function that wasfocused to analyze in this research for supporting problem solving

2.2 Symptom and real problem

Since the day of becoming the official member of World Trade Organization in 2007, manynew opportunities and challenges are opened for the Vietnamese economy and other fields.This also causes the great challenges of competition for banks at Viet Nam

VIB is a commercial bank at Vietnam and also cannot avoid the fierce competition among theother banks Competitors of VIB includes both Vietnamese and foreign banks at Vietnamesemarket Basing on the chartered capital at the latest time, there are about four banks which havethe same level of capital with VIB including AB Bank, Shinhan Viet Nam Bank and Nam A

in the limit from VND 4,000 to 4,800 million All these banks also have the operating durationmore than twenty years at Vietnamese market and got their own achievement and valuableprizes The business result of four banks will be reflected through the figures in Table 1.

2.2.1 Business situation of VIB and other banks in recent years

As mentioned in the above part, the three selected banks having the same chartered capital withVIB for comparison include AB Bank, Shinhan Viet Nam Bank and Nam A Bank

Table 1 Chartered Capital of the four banks in 2015 (Unit: VND Billion)

Table 2 Revenue from business activities of four banks in Viet Nam in the past three years

(Source: Official Financial reports of banks in the website)

In the recent years, revenue from business activities of VIB dose just slightly rise According tofigures getting from VIB website, growing speed of revenue in the past three years (from 2012

to 2014) is so small (just from 3% - 8% in 2012-2014 duration) In comparison with othercompetitors, VIB does not have a very good level of revenue in the market

Figure 1 Revenue from business activities of four banks in Viet Nam in the past three years

0 200,000 400,000 600,000 800,000 1,000,000 1,200,000 1,400,000 1,600,000 1,800,000 2,000,000

VIB Bank

AB Bank Shinhan Viet Nam Bank

Nam A Bank

Through the chart, we can see that VIB is holding the small revenue level in comparison withthe three same size-banks in Vietnamese market It is just higher than Nam A Bank and lowerthan the two other banks This is not a good sign for business status of VIB in the future whenthe competition is more and more cutthroat and having appearances of many more new banks.The low revenue of VIB is just the symptom of a certain problem that VIB is facing and neednecessary solutions To find the possible reasons of low revenue of VIB, an in-depth interviewwith ten customers was conducted.

2.2.2 The first in-depth interview

Reasons of low revenue can come from many aspects in corporation To identify reasons,

customers in qualitative research will be asked about the basic problems from different aspects.These problems are proved that they have impact on the revenue of a corporation by manyprevious studies Below are the list of problems that having direct effect on revenue

Table 3 List of studies investigated the antecedents of revenue

1 Uddin, Lopa and

Oheduzzaman (2014)

Advertising, physical attributes, pricing, friends’ and colleagues’ recommendation

Please see the explanation below the table

Physical attributes is the most significant factor, next are pricing, colleagues’ recommendation, advertising

2 Olson and Bokor (1995) Planning process, product

Customer and market, SMEs characteristics, resources and finance, external

environment are the most significant factors, next is product quality

5 Saeed, Lodhi, Mukhtar,

Hussain, Mahmood and

Ahmad (2013)

Brand image, brand attachment, environment effects

Brand image is the most significant factor, next are brand attachment and environment effects

Product quality is the most significant factor, next are marketing strategies, supplier selection and influencers

7 Napompech and Product quality, price, Product quality is the most

Kuawiriyapan (2011) advertising advertising and price

9 Salvi and Prajapati

(2015)

Product and service quality, price, reference group, advertising

Product and service quality are the most important variable, the next important ones including reference group and advertising, finally

Value identification, lifestyle and customer service are the most influential factors, next are price, accurate

information and brand familiarity

With above list, there are many factors that affect the revenue of a corporation Outcomes fromthe problem of low revenue are mostly the poor performance of all works in corporation If thelow revenue is not improved, the firm cannot invest more in its business channels to expandmarket and enhance budget to invest in human resources quality According to Hand (as cited

in Simanjuntak et al., 2011), many companies make serious efforts to generate their revenue

because it is the main business channel of company and can help increase the firm’s

performance In the above list, the problems that have most impact on revenue including

advertising, product quality, product innovation, customer care service, etc Therefore, theproblems are chosen for checking including the aspects of product innovation, product quality,capability of staff in customer care service and advertising activity of VIB The in-depth

interview was performed at Ho Chi Minh City with ten customers; among them are five

customers who have used products of VIB more than six months to investigate the advertisingprograms, product innovation, product quality and capability of VIB staffs, and five customers

of other banks to investigate the advertising strategies of VIB The jobs and locations of chosenparticipants are different to collect diversified opinions for advertising activity The age ofinterviewees is from twenty to thirty years old because they are young people and office staffswho are the target customers of VIB The transcript of the first in-depth interview is presented

in the part of Supporting Information at page 50

Firstly, with five current customers of VIB, they are asked six questions They are people whohave used VIB products in a long time and have experienced with VIB products and services,therefore they can give exact remarks on the brand recognition of VIB, the product innovation,product quality and capability of VIB staffs Through the interview, the answers of customersare nearly the same in six questions In the first question about the logo or main colors of VIB,there is just one person can remember the color of VIB logo, the other ones do not remember

do not know clearly about the recent advertising programs of VIB These two questions play animportant role in defining the current problem of VIB because they are also possible reasonsand directly affect the low revenue of VIB in recent years Romaniuk and Sharp (as cited inAbideen and Saleem, 2011) stated that the main role of advertising is to affect the consumerbuying decision.Customer can buy and use a product or a service more thanks to their

memories about this brand through its effective advertising In the third question, when beingasked about the innovation in VIB products, all of them answered they do not see it in VIBproduct because they supposed that VIB does not have any difference or striking point againstother banks This factor also has an important role in finding the reason of low revenue of VIBbecause when VIB does not impress its image into customer’s memory, customers can notremember it in each of their purchasing decision Gjerdeet at (as cited in Hamid, 2012) saidthat the demand of customers increase when they are expecting the innovation from services.With the fourth question, customers evaluated the quality of VIB products at a normal levelwith no complains and no special compliments as well Result of this factor also has impact onthe matter of low revenue If customers find another bank with better quality, they will choose

it instead of VIB Ackaradejruangsri (2012) made a research to examine about the effect ofproduct and service quality on consumer buying decision In the dimensions of product andservice quality, the most important factors that have big impact on consumer buying decisioninclude reliability, function and durability In the next question about the attitude and support

of VIB staffs, customers gave positive comments when they find the hospitality and

satisfaction with information and advice from VIB staffs of customer care service to solve theirrequests In the final question, they told that if having chance to introduce another bank fortheir relatives, instead of recommending VIB, customers mentioned the other banks like

Vietcombank, Sacombank, Agribank, etc because of their familiarization and good quality ofproducts and services

With five customers from other banks, they are just asked about the advertising programs ofVIB They are not current customers of VIB so they cannot evaluate about product quality orcustomer care service of VIB Therefore they are given opinions about the advertising

activities In the time of making the in-depth interview, there are many advertising programs ofVIB which are being performed like Fulfill your Tet holiday with VIB, VIB offers preferentialloans for home and car buyers on Tet holidays, Enjoy Tet with Vietnam Airlines Holidays andVIB Cards, Waiver annual fee for VIB credit cards, Get 500,000 VND when opening VIBcurrent account online, etc Most of interviewees said that they do not know about these

advertising campaigns Some of them said that they just care of advertising activities of thebank that they are using Some of them indicate that when seeing advertising programs of otherbanks, they will have attention if the advertisings are attractive, exciting and suitable to theircurrent demand Then they will make comparison and consideration on that advertising withmany aspects like price, quality, reputation, etc before making purchasing decision Hence, anadvertising program can create opportunity of purchases from new customers, with condition

that the content of advertisings must attract to the target customers and be communicated onright channels.

2.2.3 Possible reasons of low revenue of VIB

Low revenue is one of the symptoms of a corporation that is so easy to recognize and it reflects

a certain implicit problem that we need to propose suitable solutions for improving the

corporation’s growth Below is the analyzing each possible reason of low revenue of VIB toidentify the real problem

2.2.3.1 Ineffective advertising activity

According to Kumar and Raju (2013), advertising is a form of communication intended toconvince a consumer to purchase or take some action towards products, information or

services, etc of a corporation Ineffectiveness in advertising activity is one of the reasons thatlead to the low revenue because its role has impact on consumers buying decision (according toKeller, as cited in Tsuji et al., 2009) In the research of Tsuji et al., 2009, they found that brandawareness is the ability of consumers to recall and recognize a particular brand from theirmemory and has a positively impact on consumer decision - making process as well as

indirectly affect the revenue of corporation One of conditions for customers to buy a brand isthat they must be made aware of it (according to Rossiter and Percy, as cited in Macdonald andSharp, 2003) Therefore, advertising activity is one of the ways to make customers know moreabout brand and attract customers to buy it The ineffectiveness in advertising activity of VIB is

got from two sources First is the data getting from customers and VIB staffs Interviewing VIBstaff (Ms Hoang Thi Van Anh – Customer Service Department), VIB just launches the

advertising and promotional programs in the two big occasions in one year; they are New YearHoliday and Christmas Eve Each program just often lasts within one month In addition, in onereport of VIB in April 2015, there are 18.18% of interviewed customers commented that

incentive or promotional program is not frequent This may lead to the ineffectiveness in

advertising activity when Macdonald and Sharp (2000) stated that the repetition of advertisingswill help to keep the brand in the consumer’s mind and it positively affects the consumer

decision making Secondly, five current customers in the in-depth interview also cannot

remember exactly the logo and colors of VIB as well as its current advertisings while they areusing products of VIB Although bank also performed advertising programs in year but theduration is too short and cannot bring a high effectiveness for VIB When people do not

remember and recognize the image of VIB on the market, they cannot use its products or

introduce to their relatives Keller (as cited in Fianto et al., 2014) implied that brand image isalso the perception of a product and reflected on the consumers’ memory about the product.Cannon et al (as cited in Fianto et al., 2014) also found that brand image can help to bringbenefit to the company in a long term In the sixth question of the in-depth interview,

customers also indicated that they will introduce another bank for their relatives because of itsfamiliarization Rossiter and Percy (as cited in Macdonald and Sharp, 2003) argued that one

indications from staffs and customers of VIB, ineffective advertising activity is seen as themost important factor that partly causing the low revenue for VIB.

2.2.3.2 Lacking of product innovation

According to Vadim Kotelnikor (as cited in Hamid, 2012), product/service innovation meansbringing a new way of solving customer’ s problem through launching a new product or servicethat creating added value for both customer and the company Other side which is considered tostudy about the reason causing the low revenue of VIB is the product innovation According tothe result of in-depth interview, customers gave their personal point of view that they do notsee any innovation from VIB in comparison with other banks This also plays an important role

in purchasing decision of customers and affects the increasing or decreasing of revenue Hamid

et al (2012) stated that product and service innovation has a big effect on the market size andthe growth of corporation revenues as well In the final question of in-depth interview,

customers also stated that they choose another bank to recommend for their relatives like

Vietcombank, Sacombank, Agribank, etc because of the innovation in products that makecustomers trust and feel be attracted This factor plays an important role in finding the reason oflow revenue of VIB

2.2.3.3 Normal product quality

According to Garvin (as cited in Wang, 2003), product quality includes eight attributes:

performance, features, conformance, reliability, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and

products In the fourth question of the in-depth interview, they do not have any complaint aboutVIB quality Deeply analyzing, in one report of VIB in April 2015, there are 42.42% of

customers said that VIB had uncompetitive interest rates which is lower than some other banks

in the retailing market From information of VIB staff after interviewing one customer, Mrs.Xuan commented that the saving rate of VIB is too low so she would like to choose anotherbank to receive more values in the future These evidences above are threats of revenue whencustomers do not have any impression about it to re-use for the next purchasing Product

quality is the third factor that is considered in finding the reason of low revenue of VIB Smith,(as cited in Hamid et al., 2012) also refers that the success or fails of a product or service in themarket are depended on the two factors including price and quality Therefore, product qualityhas a positively impact on customer buying decision

2.2.3.4 Capability of VIB staffs

Rossan (2010) said that capability involves the mental components, both conscious and

unconscious, that allow people to choose appropriate ways to solve problems One aspect that

is considered to find the real problem of VIB is the capability of VIB staffs in customer careservice Department The limit of this study is that the author cannot approach the Board ofDirector of VIB on identifying the problem However, opinions of VIB staff was certified as

proofs for the problem Interview VIB staff (Hoang Thi Van Anh – Customer Service

Department), bank provides training courses for new members in the first duration of joining

for all members in suitable times, including online and offline courses to improve workingskills as well as other soft skills to work better with customers According to information fromVIB, bank makes the periodic surveys in 153 branches across Vietnam (27 cities/provinces).Data is based on N=5 customers/branch, 760 customers in one report In the latest report onMay 2015 (performed from April 15 to May 15, 2015 by Marketing & Communication

Department of VIB), result showed that the rate of customers are satisfied with all criteria isincrease dramatically (from 36% up to 57%) The percentage of customers having complaintsabout all criteria declines, especially decreasing negative comments for staffs (down from

10.8% in March to 6.3% in April)(Source from Customer Satisfaction Survey in May, 2015 was

delivered by Marketing Communication Department of VIB) In addition, according to the

result of the in-depth interview, customers answered that there are no complaint about VIBstaffs The consultant and sales officers are friendly, enthusiastic and supportive with all

customers With these evidences about staff capability, this factor is eliminated in the reasons

of low revenue of VIB in recent years

2.2.4 The most important problem: ineffective advertising activity

With the four possible reasons which may cause the low yearly revenue of VIB analyzingabove, we eliminated the factor of weak capability of VIB staffs while customers and VIBstaffs also gave positive comments and proofs for VIB staff skills, attitude, working capability,etc The remaining factors including advertising activity, product quality and product

innovation are also contained evidences that can be the reasons leading to the low revenue ofVIB The evidences are taken from opinions of customers in the in-depth interview, currentcustomers of VIB and data which was supplied from VIB staff Among these three factors, asanalyzing above, advertising activity is the most important factor that affects the low revenuewith clearly and detail evidences The lacking of attention from current and new customers toVIB brand image and advertising programs do not impulse their purchasing decision or

introducing VIB products to other people With these reasons, revenue of VIB cannot improvemore and more in comparison with competitors The evidences of this problem are collectedfrom current data about advertising programs of VIB, secondary data from results in VIB report

in April 2015 and opinions of current and new customers in the in-depth interview

About the two remaining factors, product innovation and product quality, they are also

containing the own problems but the collected data is not strong enough to prove they are themain sources leading to the low revenue Therefore, in this research, advertising activity is themain factor that will be focused to analyze and find effective solutions for improving the

current situation of VIB According to Oxford Dictionary, “insufficiency” means somethingwhich are not strong or important enough for a particular purpose or the inability of an organ toperform its normal function In the context of VIB, insufficiency of advertising activity meansthe bank has performed it but these activities cannot reach the proposed targets Customers donot know about advertising programs and then revenue of VIB cannot be increased to be

adequate to the cost which is spent for advertising Hence, advertising activity is the problemthat needs to solve to improve the revenue of VIB in the next time.

2.3 Cause and effect diagram

As analyzing on above sections, to find the real problem leading the low revenue of VIB inrecent years, author checked from many fields in VIB Basing on literature reviews, authoridentified fours aspects which were proved that they are directly impact on the revenue ofcorporation including advertising activities, product innovation, product quality and capability

of staff To investigate these aspects, author used evidences from three main sources includingcurrent situation of VIB, secondary data from VIB and primary data from the in-depth

interview with ten customers The result of these sources showed that there is no problem withproduct innovation, product quality and capability of staff of VIB With advertising activities,author found many problems on this aspect basing on literature review, result of the in-depthinterview, secondary data from VIB and the current situation of the bank Therefore, it wasidentified to be the main problem that led to the low revenue of VIB The below diagram

reflects the cause and effect of symptom

Figure 2 Cause and effect diagram of Low revenue

The problem of insufficient advertising activity also happens in many corporations Huang andLai (2011) made the study to examine the brand management in small and medium-sized

enterprises (SMEs) to find solutions for building strong brands to SMEs Huang and Lai (2011)suggested that the Board of Director should increase more knowledge about brand management

to analyze customers’ demand better Besides, company also needs to invest more in the term strategies of building and developing brand recognition Namely, company should focus

long-on improving the quality of products and services because they are also factors that affect thebrand awareness About the advertising activity, Huang and Lai (2011) suggested that companymust perform effective marketing plans to communicate with customers’ target and attract theirattention because the more customers, the more benefit will be brought to company to gethigher revenue against competitors That is the same problem that happened in other

corporations With VIB, basing on the appropriate conditions of the present situation of the

Advertising Activity Product Quality

Product Innovation

Capability of staff

Low revenue

corporation, author will propose effectively and necessary solutions for improving the

Table 4 List of studies investigated factors affecting effectiveness of advertising

1 Hilmi and Ngo (2011) Media of advertising, cost of

advertising, frequently of advertising, content of advertising, target readers

Please see the explanation below the table

Cost of advertising is the most significant factor, next are target readers, contents of advertising, media of advertising and frequency of advertising

2 Banks (1973) Creative advertising, media,

budget, organization, regulatory

Creative advertising is the most significant factor,

effort next are media, budget,

organization, regulatory effort

3 Shojaee and Azman

(2013)

Brand exposure, customer engagement, electronic-word-of- mouth

Customer engagement is the most significant factor, next are brand exposure and electronic-word-of- mouth

4 Bennett and Leigh

(2009)

Animation, repetition of advertising, baseball involvement, team identification

Repetition of advertising is the most significant factor, next are baseball

involvement, team identification and animation

5 Pergelova, Prior and

In the above list, the outcomes of ineffective advertising are mostly the limited opportunityfrom purchase decision of target customers, and this directly affects the revenue of a company.According to Kumar (2013), if the problem of ineffective advertising is not solved, companycannot reach its potential customers while seeking information of company through advertising

company cannot increase while revenue of its competitors is still rising through advertisingactivities Therefore, solving the problem of ineffective advertising activity is a serious thingfor VIB at present.

Besides refer from previous studies, to consider alternatives, author made the second in-depthinterview with five people With the kind of interviewees, they can be using products of otherbanks because they are just the potential customers in the future The jobs and locations ofchosen participants are different to collect diversified opinions for advertising activity The age

of subject is from twenty to thirty years old because they are young people and office staffswho are the target customers of VIB The detail of second in-depth interview is presented in thepart of Supporting Information at page 64 Combining results in this in-depth interview andsecondary data from literature review and other sources, author analyzed each alternative tochoose the best alternatives for VIB in the next parts

3.1 Alternative one: Enhancing advertising activity for VIB on traditional media

In the result of the first in-depth interview and other reports of VIB in recent time, customers

do not remember clearly the color of VIB logo and the advertising programs as well They alsosaid that the appearance of promotional program is not frequent This situation needs to beimproved to enhance the effectiveness of advertising activity

Goldsmith and Lofferty (as cited in Abideen and Saleem, 2011) stated that an effective

advertising can positively affect the brand and helps to increase the number of purchase

Bijmolt et al (as cited in Abideen and Saleem, 2011) also implied that the purpose of

advertising is to encourage consumers to buy more products and enhance the brand awareness.The important thing of advertising in the role of contributing the success of brand awareness isits repetition Danaher and Mullarkey (as cited in Tsuji et al., 2009) said that the repetition ofadvertising will make the awareness levels of viewers increase Similarly, there are many

researches of other people like Cacioppo and Petty in 1979, Danaher and Mullarkey in 2003,Singh and Cole in 1993, etc found the positive effects of repetition of advertisings on brandawareness

According to information from staffs of VIB, normally, VIB launches the advertising programsjust in about two occasions They are the beginning and the end of year This quantity is alsonot frequent for customers to be able to remember and update the latest information of VIB.Besides, VIB has not taken full advantages of the media channels yet At present, VIB is

putting its advertising on newspapers, leaflet, standees and some financial websites Basing oncurrent condition of Marketing and Communication Department of VIB, advertising at

buildings is being lacked from the advertising channels of VIB

To enhance the advertising activity for VIB on traditional media, author suggests applying thethree channels for advertising including LCD screen in elevators, print media and television

3.1.1 Advertising on LCD screen in elevators

To enhance the advertising activities of VIB, in this first solution, author suggests VIB

advertising on electronic boards (LCD) When proceeding this alternative, VIB will hire anagency for posting advertising on LCD and they will set time to run advertising video of brand

on all screens of their building list with total quantity of screen is 2,000 Total time for

advertising of one brand on screen is 30 minutes in one day Duration of each advertising videocan be 10 seconds, 15 seconds or 30 seconds depending on budget of each company The

advertising will be repeated one time after each 12 minutes Therefore the total time of

repeating advertising in one day is 60 times This is a kind of advertising which has the highfrequency by high quality LCD

Advertising on LCD in the elevators can attract the big quantity of targeting customers of VIBwho are young people because elevators of buildings are used by the bulk of the office staffs.The present targeting customers of VIB is younger like students and office staffs According toofficial information on VIB’s website, individual who are Vietnamese citizens, have civil legalcapacity and civil act capacity (18 years old or above) will be eligible to open current accounts.The current products of VIB are also targeting young people like the product of oversea studyloan to meet the needs for studying oversea study, attending international affiliate programs inVietnam, providing financial capabilities and remittance, etc Another kind of VIB product thattargeting office staffs is payroll package In the special offer of VIB, customers who are

employees have opportunities for secured consumer loan with 1% discount in lending interest

rate for entire loan term This kind of customer also has big demand of using other bankingproducts like paying through cards, making loans, transferring money, etc Therefore,

advertising on LCD screens in elevator is suitable for VIB to find its potential customers

Elevator is the area having large density of people who are using it every day and pacing upand down LCD screens are installed inside and outside elevators to be able to transmit thebranding messages to people who are working in the building ranked A and B of Ho Chi MinhCity

According to one study on 3/2010 of Nielsen Holdings – a global information and

measurement company,an office staff in Ho Chi Minh City has the quantity of using elevatoreight times in one day on average The high times of using elevator lead to the high time oflooking at advertising on electronic boards An office staff in Ho Chi Minh City will see theadvertising screen at least 5.5 times in one day on average According to study of Neilsen in

2010, the time of waiting for elevator is also interesting Almost people in buildings like towatch advertising at elevators rather than having to wait for elevators In addition, according toStatistic Department of a Marketing Academy of Toronto in Canada, people who are living orworking in building will use elevator four times/day on average There will be about no lessthan two visitors coming building and using elevator In the survey of Marketing Academy ofToronto, there are 85% of opinions supposing that advertising in elevator is suitable and 82%people answering that they pay attention to what are advertised in elevators There are two

of the interesting contents of advertising There are many buildings which are installed the highquality LCD screens in Ho Chi Minh City like Vincom, Diamond Plaza, Kumho, Petro

Vietnam Tower, CentrePoint and many other ranked A and B buildings According to onereport of a research - data and insight company– Kantar Media (the old name is TNS MediaVietnam), advertising on LCD screens in buildings holds the second position about the frequentlevel of watching or listening advertising on media channels Its position just stands after

advertising on television and be better than advertising on print media and internet In addition,when investigating about the appropriate fields to advertise on LCD, finance and banking isholding the sixth position among many different fields like food and drink, cell phone,

cosmetics, entertainment, health care, etc Therefore, advertising VIB products on LCD is quite

a suitable solution

3.1.2 Advertising on print media

The second channel which is suggested is to advertising on magazine and newspaper Themedia titles are selected including Thanh Nien, Sai Gon Tiep Thi and The Gioi Phu Nu Withthis alternative, marketing staffs will cooperate with an advertising agency to put VIB

information on print media Contents of these information will be composed by marketingstaffs of VIB Then, they will cooperate with agency to arrange schedules of advertising

information to be appeared on both LCD and print media According to secondary data gettingfrom websites of these newspapers, the circulation of Thanh Nien, Sai Gon Tiep Thi and The

Gioi Phu Nu is from 80,000 to 500,000 and focusing the right objects of VIB such as youngpeople, office staffs, business people, etc In the past, VIB also advertises in some newspapers,but the appearance of VIB on print media is so few and cannot make customers pay more

attention In this solution, the author suggests new more media titles and the time for

performing it also must be increased more than the past

According to one recent report of Nielsen Holdings, advertisements in print media continue to

be among the most reliable forms of paid advertising in Vietnam Nielsen Holdings Companyannounced the finding of its Global Trust in Advertising Survey conducted in 60 countries andterritories to gauge consumer sentiment in 19 forms of advertising mediums There are 65% oflocal consumers continuing to trust advertisings in magazines and 60% believed in newspaperadvertisings Below is the expected cost for advertising on LCD and print media to enhance theadvertising activities of VIB in one quarter and one year The appearance of VIB informationshould be frequent as the schedule of advertising on two channels in below table

Table 5 Expected cost of advertising on print media and LCD in 2016 (Unit: VND)

Sai Gon Tiep Thi 26,000,000/time 260,000,000 (10 times) The Gioi Phu Nu 30,000,000/time 300,000,000 (10 times)

According to the secondary data from a study of a branding company, there are 33% of

companies using from 3% - 5% of the turnover for advertising activities Basing on the

secondary data of VIB in 2014, 3% the turnover (VND 246 billion) will be VND 7.38 billion.According to the expected cost of advertising in the above table, the total cost for advertising inone quarter is VND 1.8 billion; therefore, total cost in one year (four quarters) will be VND 7.2billion Therefore, this budget for advertising is on the acceptable limit and be suitable to thepresent turnover of VIB

The advantage of two above channels is easily having the attention of customers because thetwo advertising channels are tools which are quite close to community and can be easily caught

by everybody at many places When advertising on LCD and print media, customers and otherpeople can easily see VIB information and know its products This will positively affect thebrand awareness of customers when they can catch VIB image and information in a long time.The quantity viewers of LCD channel and print media are quite high According to the

secondary data of an agency who installs LCD for advertising, there are about 8,000,000

viewers for advertising on LCD every day With advertising on the three media titles includingThanh Nien, Sai Gon Tiep Thi, The Gioi Phu Nu, and the total circulation in one day is

880,000 These figures lead to the high quantity of viewer for advertising of VIB This alsobrings the high ability of success for this solution

Disadvantage of two above channels regards the cost to perform advertising on LCD and printmedia When doing marketing, especially advertise on media channels, one of successful

factors is that advertising activities have to be carried out regularly and continuously until thebrand gets a stable position in the market and on customer mind Therefore, the time for doingmarketing should be not too short or interrupted This will make customers quickly forget VIBimage and the efforts of building brand awareness in the previous time will become wasteful.Hence, the cost for maintaining advertising activities in many years will make up a big part inbudget of VIB This disadvantage will be considered in the below part for choosing a bestsuitable advertising channel.

3.1.3 Advertising on television

Similar to alternatives of print media and LCD, to carry out this alternative, marketing staffswill cooperate with advertising agency to put VIB information on television The time foradvertising of VIB is from 8PM on HTV7 channel with duration of 15 seconds for each

broadcasting time In a week, advertising of VIB will be appeared five times on television toattract the attention of customers

According one report of Kantar Media Vietnam – a research, data and insight company, in thelast two years, 2013 and 2014, the budget for advertising on television of Vietnamese marketmade up the highest percentage among other advertising channels like print media, radio,

cinema, banner, etc In 2013, total cost for advertising on television is about USD 209.26

billion, made up 40.8% In 2014, the cost for this channel in Vietnamese market is about USD

Vietnam presents that advertisings in television have received the most reliability by audiencewith 71,7% of the number of interviewees.

Besides the figures that showing advantage of advertising on television from secondary data, inthe second in-depth interview, most of people said that they do not pay much attention on thecontent of advertisings on television Therefore, they also do not often arise demand of

purchasing when seeing advertisings on television Below is the expected cost of advertising ontelevision in 2016 With this cost, if adding it with the total cost of advertising on LCD andprint media, the final figure will be VND 11,520 billion This budget exceeded 3% of turnover

90,000,000/week 1,080,000,000 (12 weeks) 4,320,000,000 (4 quarters)

(Source: Information on websites of advertising agencies)

Advantage of this solution is that it is broadcasted on television which has the big amount ofaudience in duration from 8 PM to 9 PM This is also reason why many corporations are

willing to expend a bulk of budget for this channel However, this is just the figure in report of

a research company In reality, when interviewing customers, they indicated that they really

often watch television at the evening but their attention to advertising on television is so few.This leads to the ability of purchasing products through advertising on television is so low Thisfactor is also disadvantage of solution of advertising on television Therefore, advertising onthis channel will be considered clearly when choosing final alternatives.

3.2 Alternative two: Electronic word of mouth

Second alternative is electronic word of mouth (E-WOM) According to Shojaee and Azman(2013), E-WOM appeared in the development of computer and internet It is the

communicating information between receivers and senders who do not know each other

through internet However, the effect of E-WOM to communication is high because of the highnumber of people that engaged into a discussion and the fast speed of spreading this

information to many other channels Shojaee and Azman (2013) implied that E-WOM is

effective not only because of the transferring the real and good experience from the users butalso because of its low cost to help marketers save a big budget Jansen et al., (as cited in

Shojaee and Azman, 2013) stated that similar to traditional word of mouth, customers feel trust

in messages of other customers who have used a certain product and service more than theflowery advertising information from the company Weber (as cited in Shojaee and Azman,2013) also indicated that E-WOM is an effective tool to promote a brand while it is faster,broader and cheaper in compare to other types of marketing communication There are many

development of the social network, the two activities are selected to promote E-WOM are viralmarketing channel through emails and communicating with customers through fanpage infacebook called social media.

3.2.1 Email

With the first activity of E-WOM – viral marketing, marketers of VIB will create the onlinepromotional programs in the form of an e-mail However, a simple email with full of text

cannot attract customers rather than email with images and interesting information like

voucher, useful gifts, games, etc According to the result of second in-depth interview,

interviewees have the same opinions when saying that they often use email to send information

to their relatives if it is useful information Therefore, emails in the advertising activities ofVIB should contain pictures or banners instead of text Customers often feel boring when

having to read a long mail with too much text On contrary, they will feel interesting with mail having funny pictures or attracting banners in the body of the e-mail message Besidesintroducing products, these messages will include some coupons or special offers to customerswho are willing to forward the e-mail to many other persons By this way, the information ofVIB is spread to many people When being forwarded email from a relative of a trusted people,receivers will not hesitate to open and read the whole email Catching this psychology of

e-customers, VIB can organize the small mini-games with attractive prize The condition ofjoining this game is that players have to forward this mail to a quantity of their relatives With

this process, the transferring messages will be carried out with the fast speed on the bulk ofsubject.

At present, VIB does not have the ebullient activities of communicating with customers

through emails Therefore, this activity should be performed in advertising activities of VIBbasing on the figures that proving the effectiveness of this channel According to survey ofDirect Marketing Association, email marketing brings the average benefit over 4.300% ROI(return on investment) for many corporations Emails help corporations get new customersbetter nearly 40 times rather than the most famous social networks at present like Facebook,Instagram, Twitter, etc

To fortify the solutions of enhancing effectiveness for advertising activity of VIB, the authorconducted the second in-depth interview to collect opinions of customers about the Marketingchannels that are used to attract customer’s attention better According to result in that

interview, customers said that they believe in the information which is sent by their friends orrelatives One of the interviewees, Ms My Nu said that she is so busy and does not have manytimes to directly meet her friends Therefore, she contacts with friends via emails and trust ininformation which are shared by them Hence, email will be a suitable tool for carrying out theconnection with customers on online channel Besides email, there are many other useful toolsthat we can select such as Social Media in popular networks like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin,Instagram, etc