An Evaluation of Brand Image Based on Consumers' Brand Consideration: Taking Chinese Banking as an Example

Brand image has been studied either from consumers' brand consideration perspective or corporation perspective, but seldom been explored from both sides. In a setting of Chinese banking industry, this research evaluated brand image from both sides of consumer and corporation perspectives. In reference to Aaker (1996)'s brand identity system which identified corporation brand image from four dimensions of product, humanity, corporation and signal, it developed a brand image measurement and explored into banking consumers evaluations towards brand images of six representative banks in China. Results show that, humanity image is a great disadvantage to both local and foreign banking brands. Besides, local share-holding commercial banks, like CMB have exerted a powerful and influential brand image which benefits them future growth and competitive advantages against foreign banks. In addition, as traditional dominant banking brands, ICBC and BC show great disadvantages on product and humanity images. It is suggested that they should learn from share-holding commercial banks like CMB and foreign banks to make improvements in product design, service quality, brand personality and brand-customer relationship establishment etc. For those rising local share-holding commercial banks, they should learn from foreign banks to reinforce brand corporation image and signal image.