AUTHOR
Grankvist, Anna; Kollberg, Carolina; Persson, Anna

DATE
2004-06-04

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SUMMARY
The issues of promotion are becoming more and more complicated as internationalization of financial services continues to increase. In the latter years, the Baltic States have emerged as attractive markets for many western countries, and several banks have initiated operations there. The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of international banks’ promotion strategies in the Baltic States. In order to reach our purpose we have conducted a case study of a Nordic retail bank’s promotion strategy in Estonia. For our data collection we have used interviews and documentations. Our study shows that the most important promotion tools for financial services are personal selling and advertising, in order to create awareness of the brand and establish personal relationships. The external factors influencing the choice of promotion strategy are technology orientation of the industry, cultural aspects, competitiveness of the market, and economic factors. Adaptation of the promotion strategy is performed to a great extent, due to customers’ different preferences and expectations, as well as local conditions of the host country. However, banks attempt to standardize their promotion as much as possible in order to reduce costs and reach economies of scale.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--04/152--SE / NR 2004:152