Generation Y consumers’ perceived brand personality of South African retail banks

Abstract

Successful management of a retail bank’s brand requires some form of brand image, such as brand personality. Creating a retail bank’s brand personality is effective in establishing attachment between customers and the retail-banking brand they choose to support based on self-identification. As such, this study’s aim is to investigate the bank identification and perceived brand personality dimensions of retail banks among the profitable and significantly sized Generation Y banking market. For this study, a non-probability convenience sample of 300 Generation Y banking customers was used. A self-administered questionnaire was developed for data collection. The results of the study suggest that Generation Y customers perceive their chosen retail bank as successful, sophisticated, sincere, rugged, community driven and classic. Moreover, the results showed that the brand personality dimensions of community driven and successfulness are mostly related to the identification of Generation Y customers with their retail bank brand. Customers who easily identify with their retail bank brand bring financial benefits to the bank, as these customers remain loyal to the brand. The results provide insights that can help retail banks to better understand their current brand personality perceptions, which is important given that brand personality can improve bank brand identification among customers.