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Managerial framework for bank advertising

Article  in  International Journal of Bank Marketing · June 2019

DOI: 10.1108/IJBM-10-2018-0288

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Bank
Managerial framework for advertising
bank advertising
Mónika Anetta Alt and Zsuzsa Săplăcan
Department of Economics and Business Administration in Hungarian Language,
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration,
1547
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and
Received 22 October 2018
József Berács Revised 9 April 2019
11 April 2019
John Von Neumann University, Kecskemét, Hungary and Accepted 17 April 2019
Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to create a managerial framework for selecting the most effective
bank advertisement appeal for different financial services. Financial services were classified based on the
FCB grid: high/low involvement and think/feel decision.
Design/methodology/approach – The data were collected from 62 banks with content analysis based on
1,514 unique print advertisements, published between 2006 and 2014 in national newspapers in Romania and
Hungary. The ads were coded, based on Pollay’s appeals, and then a cluster analysis was performed to
identify appeal and financial service clusters.
Findings – The results revealed ten bank-specific appeals which can be used for advertising four different
banking services categories. All type of savings and loans for B2B are advertised with quality appeals (safety,
productivity); current account and card, personal/home loans are advertised with financial value appeals
(convenient, cheap); corporate branding with emotional appeals (affiliation, distinctive, enjoyment); and
services with mixed appeals.
Research limitations/implications – The study could be extended for different target market, creative
strategy, other media and more countries.
Practical implications – The paper provides guidelines on how the FCB grid could be extended for bank
services to recommend specific appeals for each category.
Originality/value – The financial service literature proposes guidelines regarding bank advertisements.
However, the recommended advertisement appeals were not linked to different bank services. This paper
creates a comprehensive managerial framework in order to match the bank’s specific appeals with different
bank services.
Keywords Financial services, Advertising, Bank, FCB grid, Informational and emotional appeal,
Pollay’s appeal
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
The financial service industry spends a significant amount of money on advertising; in 2016,
US banks spent $17.1bn on advertising and marketing (EMI, 2017). The effectiveness of
advertisement – using the right appeal – is more important than ever. It is generally accepted
that effective advertising combines a rational appeal with an emotional value (Belch and
Belch, 2003); however, how customers process the information depends on several variables.
People are more interested in informational appeals when the likelihood of elaboration is high
because the central route of information processing needs thoughtful consideration. People are
more attracted by emotional appeals when the likelihood of elaboration is low because they
want to simplify the information process using a peripheral route. The most important
variable that affects the likelihood of message-elaboration could be the personal relevance/
International Journal of Bank
involvement of the message (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). Besides the messages, financial Marketing
service ads used to disclosed a substantial amount of information regarding the products. Vol. 37 No. 7, 2019
pp. 1547-1565
However, a number of cognitive limitations can lead to the inability of the consumers to © Emerald Publishing Limited
0265-2323
process complex information, specific for the financial service decisions. For example, the DOI 10.1108/IJBM-10-2018-0288
IJBM financial service consumer may rely only on a subset of product-information, and often on a
37,7 single attribute in purchasing decisions. Furthermore, customers can face short-term memory
overload due to complex information processing. In addition, there are frequently occurring
biased perceptions and evaluations of the risk level or the time value of the money in the
decision process (Estelami, 2009). In these circumstances, it is quite challenging for the
advertisers to formulate appropriate messages for the financial service customer.
1548 A large amount of research investigating effective advertising message strategies for
different product and service types has relied on the so-called FCB Grid developed by Richard
Vaughn and his associates at the Foote, Cone and Belding advertising agency in the 1980s.
According to this model, products and services could be classified into four categories according
to their level of involvement (high/low) and buying decision (think/feel). Each category needs
specific appeals (Vaughn, 1986). At the same time, Pollay (1983) provided another relevant tool
for advertising research: a full list of all common advertising appeals which reflect the cultural
values of the society. It has been almost 30 years since the FCB advertising planning model
developed originally mainly for products, was applied to services by Mortimer (2002). According
to Mortimer (2002), services could also be classified into four categories. Although financial
services were included in several cross services studied (Albers-Miller and Gelb, 1996; Ha, 1998;
Albers-Miller and Stafford, 1999a; Décaudin and Lacoste, 2010), only after 2000 has research
concentrated exclusively on financial services advertisement appeals.
The content of advertisements in the banking industry got special attention in studies within
numerous western countries (Albers-Miller and Straughan, 2000; Jørgensen and Isaksson, 2008;
Haque et al., 2010; Shabir et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2011; Ahn et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2012; Underwood
et al., 2015; Mogaji et al., 2018). These research papers revealed that financial service
advertisements have mostly informational appeals (Albers-Miller and Stafford, 1999a). In total,
18 appeals, both informational and transformational, were identified as specific for financial
services (Albers-Miller and Straughan, 2000; Alt and Săplăcan, 2019) from Pollay’s list of appeals
(Pollay, 1983). Until recently, the identified bank-specific appeals were not matched with banks
services. Banks offer a very heterogeneous services range regarding their level of involvement:
choosing investments or loans needs high involvement while opening a current account implies
low involvement in customers purchasing decisions (Beckett and Howcroft, 2000; Howcroft et al.,
2007). There is a gap in the literature concerning linking bank-specific appeals with bank
services. This paper is to cover this gap by extending the advertising theory to banking services.
Therefore the purpose of this paper is to create a managerial framework based on the
FCB grid in order to select the most effective bank advertisement appeal from Pollay’s list of
appeals for different financial services categories.
In order to achieve the aim of the paper, the advertising strategies of 62 banks were
studied during a period of nine years. In total, 74 percent of the banks from the sample are
operating on the international market which allows us, to some extent, to generalize from the
results. The data were collected with a content analysis based on 1,514 unique print
advertisements published between 2006 and 2014 in national newspapers in two countries,
Romania and Hungary, which members of the European Union. With this methodology, the
appeals used in banks’ advertisements were identified and the extent to which there is a
match-up between how in practice financial services are advertised (positive view) and the
appeal strategy recommended by the FCB grid (normative view) was assessed.
This paper is innovative by creating a managerial framework in order to connect the
banks’ specific appeals with different bank service categories. Second, as far as we know, it
is the first time that the FCB grid has been applied for financial services. Third, in this
paper, the FCB grid is extended by implementing in the matrix the widely used appeals of
Pollay. Finally, the data were collected from two Central and Eastern European (CEE)
countries, namely in Romania and in Hungary, where the research on marketing
communications for financial services is scarce.
 In the following, the paper presents a literature review regarding the characteristics of Bank
services’, financial services’ advertising and advertising appeals across different types of advertising
financial services. Based on the literature review, the hypothesis and the concept of a bank
advertising framework are developed. The hypothesis is tested and the results are
discussed. Finally, conclusions are presented.

Literature review 1549

Service advertising
Financial service advertising principles are grounded in service advertising theories. The
particular characteristics of services, such as intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and
perishability call for different advertising guidelines for services than for goods (George and
Berry, 1981). For example, in order to increase advertising effectiveness, an intangible
service should be presented with verbal tangible cues in print ads (Staford, 1996).
Besides the difference between goods and services, the difference between target
markets could also require a different advertising strategy. Consumer service ads contain a
more emotional appeal than business ads do (Turley and Kelley, 1997). Differences between
service type credence vs experience (Ha, 1998) and utilitarian vs experiential (Albers-Miller
and Stafford, 1999a) also revealed differences in applied advertising appeals. In addition, the
cross-cultural dimension is also reflected in advertising appeals (Albers-Miller and Gelb,
1996; Ha, 1998; Albers-Miller and Stafford, 1999a).
Despite the significant amount of research in this field, studies related to theories were
scarce between 1980 and 1995. Theoretical underpinnings include theories related to
involvement, the hierarchy effects, social judgment theory, attitude toward the ad, source
credibility, price-quality relationships, perceived risk, professional dominance theory, the
theory of deprofessionalization and contingency hypothesis (Tripp, 1997).
Similar to products, the level of involvement in purchasing services determines the
cognitive response toward persuasion. In terms of cognitive psychologists, high
involvement-persuasion situations may be governed more by “controlled processing,”
while low involvement-persuasion situations may be governed by “automatic processing”
(Petty and Cacioppo, 1979). These are the bases of the theory of the elaboration likelihood
model (ELM). When people are highly involved, motivated and able to think about the
content of the message, the elaboration involves cognitive processing (evaluation, critical
judgment, etc.) through the central persuasive route. When people are less involved, they are
not motivated to assess the content of the message and prefer to follow a principle derived
from the persuasion situation (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986).
The ELM was further developed to create a managerial framework for advertising
planning in the form of the Foote, Cone and Belding model (called FCB grid). The FCB grid
helps to understand the purchasing decision of the product; whether or not it requires a
highly involved rational decision or a highly involved emotional decision. Therefore, the
communication appeal should be differentiated for high vs low involvement products and
those which predominantly required thinking or feeling information processing (Vaughn,
1986; Ratchford, 1987).
A new contribution to service advertising development arose by integrating the FCB
grid into the services advertising planning. According to this theory, services form
heterogonous groups and could be classified into four categories based on consumer
decision-making types (think/feel) and the level of involvement (high/low). Consequently, the
types of appeal need to match the service type for maximum effectiveness (Mortimer, 2002):
• in case of high involvement products/services where thinking and economic
considerations prevail, informative appeals are recommended (e.g. life insurance,
credit cards, etc.);
IJBM • in case of high involvement and feeling purchases, “affective” appeals are
37,7 recommended (e.g. hotel, holidays, etc.);
• in case of low involvement and thinking products with routinized consumer behavior,
habitual appeals are recommended (banks, photo processing, etc.); and
• in case of low involvement and feeling products, for personal taste, satisfaction/social
appeals are recommended ( fast food, etc.).
1550
The matching theory (FCB grid) is challenged because it was found in some case studies
that both rational and emotional appeals could be used effectively in service advertisements,
and there was a prevalence of emotional appeals (Mortimer, 2008).
Recent results have revealed that the most important variable in developing an
advertising strategy is the type of industry. It is followed by the type of offer (product or
services) and the type of market (B2C, B2B and mixed targets) (Décaudin and Lacoste, 2010).
Taking into consideration the results of the previous research, it is necessary to
investigate in detail the financial service advertising related to different financial
services categories.

Financial services advertising

Although financial services were included in several cross-service industry studies
(Albers-Miller and Gelb, 1996; Ha, 1998; Albers-Miller and Stafford, 1999a, b; Décaudin and
Lacoste, 2010), only after 2000 have researches been focused more on financial services
advertisement appeals (Anderson and Golden, 1984; Andrus, 1994; Albers-Miller and
Straughan, 2000; Jørgensen and Isaksson, 2008; Haque et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2011, 2012; Ahn
et al., 2012; Alt et al., 2017; Mogaji et al., 2018; Alt and Săplăcan, 2019).
Similarly to services in general, early theoretical works in financial services were also
based on the four characteristics of services (Davies, 1996). Later the researches were built
on services typology (utilitarian and experiential) and Pollay’s (1983) 42 list of
appeals. Pollay identified 42 cultural values manifested in advertising. This list is widely
used in the content analysis of advertising and it is considered as an exhaustive list of
advertising appeals.
Researchers revealed that rational appeals were more dominant in financial services
advertisement, while emotional appeals were used more heavily in experiential service
advertisement (Albers-Miller and Stafford, 1999a, b). However, emotional appeals are also
present in financial advertisements, even in B2B financial services (Mogaji et al., 2018).
Albers-Miller and Straughan (2000) developed the financial services specific appeals
based on Pollay’s list. According to them the following 13 appeals were mostly used in
financial services: “cheap,” “convenient,” “effective,” “family-oriented,” “modern,” “neat,”
“ornamental,” “popular,” “productive,” “relaxing,” “safe,” “technological” and “wise.” These
appeals were grouped in five clusters which represent specific dimensions of financial
service advertisement (Albers-Miller and Straughan, 2000).
Informational advertisement:
• the dimension of services quality: “wisdom,” “safety,” “productivity” and “effective”
appeal;
• the dimension of innovativeness: “modern,” “technological” and “neat” appeal; and
• the dimension of financial value: “cheap” and “convenient” appeal.
Transformational advertisement:
• the dimension of atmospherics: “relaxing,” “popular” and “ornamental” appeal; and
• the dimension of “family values.”
Six appeals: “cheap,” “convenient,” “effective,” “productivity,” “safety” and “wisdom” from Bank
Albers-Miller and Straughan’s (2000) list were also found to be specific for CEE banks’ advertising
advertisements. At the same time, researchers revealed new specific appeals for bank
advertising, such as: “distinctive,” “traditional,” “independence,” “nurturance” and
“affiliation” (Alt and Săplăcan, 2019).
In financial service advertising studies various range of providers were included such as
banks, credit card providers, insurance providers, investment funds, stock brokerages, etc. 1551
which satisfy different customer demands. Only limited number of studies had special focus
on the banking industry in terms of advertising strategy. Researches regarding bank
advertisements are summarized in Table I.
Banks have a special status among financial institutions because they offer a wide range
of financial services: money transactions, savings, loans (personal, home), mortgages, debit/

Authors Article titles Studied products Research method

Anderson and Bank promotion strategies Credit, new accounts, Experiment

Golden (1984) corporate reputation
Albers-Miller Financial services advertising in Bank ads Content analysis based on
and Straughan eight non-English speaking countries Pollay’s appeals
(2000) 398 print advertisement
Japan, Taiwan, Israel, France,
Finland, Brazile, Chile,
Mexico, USA
Jørgensen and Building credibility in international Corporate reputation Content analysis
Isaksson banking and financial markets: a 74 print ads
(2008) study of how corporate reputations
are managed through image
advertising
Haque et al. Shariah observation: advertising Different banking Observation
(2010) practices of Bank Muamalat in products Malaysia
Malaysia
Décaudin and Are services advertised differently? Banking, insurance Content analysis based on
Lacoste (2010) An empirical examination and other services (9 different aspects
different fields) 4,233 ads from magazines
France
Hakim et al. Advertising of Islamic banking Different banking Secondary data
(2011) products products Islamic banks
Scharf and The advertising of corporate social CSR ads Textual, procedure and social
Fernandes responsibility in a Brazilian bank analysis
(2013) 5 ads from magazines
Brazil
Alt et al. (2017) Social responsiveness in bank Bank ads content analysis
communication to costumers before 679 print ads from magazines
the economic crisis 2004–2007
Countries from CEE
Mogaji et al. Emotional appeals in UK business-to- Bank ads Content analysis based on
(2018) business financial services Pollay’s appeal and others
advertisements 1,834 ads from magazines
UK
Semi-structured interview
Alt and Are bank advertisement appeals Bank ads Content analysis based on
Săplăcan adapted to local culture? Pollay’s appeals
(2019) 785 print ads from magazines Table I.
2006–2014 Studies regarding
Countries from CEE bank advertisements
IJBM credit cards, investments, etc. In spite of the fact that in the literature specific appeals for
37,7 banks were identified, they were not connected until now to banking services. The present
study is designed to cover this gap, by differentiating advertisement strategies for banks’
service categories.

Advertising appeals across different types of financial services

1552 Commercial banks have two primary functions: collecting deposits and lending loans.
Besides these functions, commercial banks perform a number of secondary functions, such
as the transfer of funds, periodic payments, credit cards, telebanking, internet banking,
portfolio management, social welfare programs, etc.
The lending function contributes to income smoothing by enabling the customer to
engage in current consumption paid with future earnings, while the saving function permits
the customer to exchange current income for future consumption. Transactional functions
satisfy the need to have access to money and to transfer it in everyday life (Ennew and
Waite, 2013). The generic nature of financial products determines the level of customer
involvement in the purchasing decision (Howcroft et al., 2007).
The type of financial product implies differences in consumer purchasing behavior: some
of them need rational thinking with high involvement (home loan, investment, etc.); others
require rational thinking but with low involvement (current account, etc.) (Beckett and
Howcroft, 2000; Howcroft et al., 2007). However, the customers perceive different complexity
levels of financial services (Estelami, 2008), but this element was not integral to the financial
service advertising theory.
Based on the literature, advertisements of the following bank services were identified by
the authors: savings, loans, credit card, current account and card, services, corporate brand,
and Events and PR and CSR activities.
Life insurance, pension, investments, deposits and loans are complex financial products,
with high value and risk rarely purchased, thus consumer involvement in the purchasing
decision is high (Vaughn, 1986; Foxall and Pallister, 1998; Beckett and Howcroft, 2000;
Howcroft et al., 2007). At the same time, the rational aspect of the financial services purchasing
decision overrides the emotional side (Foxall and Pallister, 1998). According to the FCB grid,
these services are high involvement/think and should be advertised with informative appeals
(Vaughn, 1986). In case of financial products the appeal should refer to the services quality
(“wisdom,” “safety,” “productivity” and “effective” appeal) and the innovativeness of the
services (“modern,” “technological” and “neat” appeal) (Albers-Miller and Straughan, 2000).
Regarding the informational appeals specific for banks, there is a relatively broad consensus
in the literature (Albers-Miller and Straughan, 2000; Alt and Săplăcan, 2019):
H1a. Savings advertisements use service quality and innovativeness appeals more
frequently (i.e. “productivity,” “safety,” “effective,” “wisdom,” “technological,” “modern”).
H1b. Loans advertisements use service quality and innovativeness appeals more frequently
(i.e. “productivity,” “safety,” “effective,” “wisdom,” “technological,” “modern”).
Consumers make frequent transactions with credit cards, current accounts and debit cards
or other services. These transactions involve smaller amounts of money and lower risk than
the previous categories. Therefore, the consumer is less involved in the purchasing
transaction (Weinberger and Spotts, 1989). However, in some cases credit cards could also
be considered as high involvement products (Ratchford, 1987). In a more recent study,
Mortimer (2008) found that the dominant appeal for credit card advertising is “cheapness,”
which is specific for a habitual buying process. Regarding cheque accounts, it was found
that consumers have a high price-consciousness and do not use price-quality cues, because
these are standardized services and convenience can be a better indicator of the service
quality (Estelami, 2008). The routine purchasing is usually determined by convenience Bank
considerations (Beckett and Howcroft, 2000). According to the FCB grid, these services are advertising
low involvement/think products and they should be advertised with habitual appeals
(Vaughn, 1986). In the case of these financial services, the appeal should refer to the financial
value (“cheapness” and “convenience” appeal) (Albers-Miller and Straughan, 2000):
H2a. Credit card advertisements use financial value appeals more frequently (i.e.
“convenience,” “cheapness”). 1553
H2b. Current account and card advertisements use financial value appeals more
frequently (i.e. “convenience,” “cheapness”).
H2c. Services advertisements use more financial value appeals (i.e. “convenience,”
“cheapness”).
In bank communication, the corporate brand has an important role in order to build the
bank’s image, reputation, awareness and trust. Choosing a bank is usually a long term
decision with a high level of involvement by customers in the purchasing decision.
Therefore, Rossiter et al. (1991) had placed the corporate image in a high involvement
transformational quadrant in the FCB grid (Rossiter et al., 1991). In the case of banks, the
corporate brand could be directly based on their expertise or indirectly on their empathy
with others (e.g. CSR events, etc.) ( Jørgensen and Isaksson, 2008). However, participating in
an event organized by the bank or a CSR activity assumes a lesser involvement than
choosing a bank.
The emotional dimension of building the corporate image is supported also by the
customer-based brand equity model developed by Kevin Keller (Keller, 2001). There is a
wide range of feelings that could be evoked by a brand. From a societal-marketing point of
view, two categories of feelings could be differentiated: societal approval and self-respect
(Hoeffler and Keller, 2002). Based on the Hoeffler and Keller (2002) feelings categorization,
the emotional appeals evoked by banks could be grouped in the FCB grid in affective/
psychological (self-respect) with higher involvement, and satisfaction/ societal appeals with
lesser involvement. On the other hand, some researchers found that customers perceive
emotional values as something that is “nice but not necessary” to have in banking
(O’loughlin and Szmigin, 2007).
Regarding the transformational appeals specific for banks, the results are more
heterogeneous than in case of the informational appeals. Beside Albers-Miller and
Straughan (2000) results, recent studies revealed additional appeals specific for banks such
as “distinctive,” “traditional,” “independence,” “nurturance” and “affiliation” (Alt and
Săplăcan, 2019). At the same time, the appeals from the atmospherics dimension established
by Albers-Miller and Straughan (2000) could be used both for high and low involvement
products. For example, “relaxing” is suitable for high involvement/“feel” services with
psychological connotations, while “popular” is suitable for low involvement/“feel” services
with social connotations. Thus, the content of the previous transformational dimensions
(Albers-Miller and Straughan, 2000) do not cover the content of the “feel” appeals in the FCB
grid. In the end, the banks 10 specific emotional appeals (Albers-Miller and Straughan, 2000;
Alt and Săplăcan, 2019) were classified by the authors in “affective” and satisfaction appeals
from the FCB grid:
H3. Corporate brands use affective appeals (i.e. “distinctive,” “family,” “nurturance,”
“ornamental,” “relaxation,” “traditional,” “neat,” “independence”) more frequently in
advertisements.
H4. Events and PR and CSR satisfaction appeals (i.e. “affiliation,” “popular”) are used
more frequently than in the other advertisements.
IJBM In order to increase the effectiveness of bank advertising planning, the banks’ services were
37,7 grouped in four categories according to the FCB grid, and advertising appeals were
recommended for each of the four categories. Based on the hypothesis the following
managerial framework is proposed for bank advertising development.

Data and methodology

1554 Content analysis is a widely used method to reveal advertising strategy patterns; it provides a
structured technique to explore the message and creative strategy of advertisements. Among
the advertising tools, the content analysis of printed ads from newspapers and magazines is
especially widely used in advertising research (Albers-Milles and Gelb, 1996; Albers-Miller
and Stafford, 1999a, b; Cheong et al., 2010; Pineda et al., 2015; Mogaji et al., 2018) due to the
existence of printed newspaper archives, in order to provide accurate longitudinal data.
The present study relies on print ads gathered in Romania and Hungary between 2006 and
2014, from two leading newspapers from each country. This period covers the changes in the
last global economic cycle: the last part of the expansion (2006), the peak (2007), the contraction
(2008), the trough (2009) and the new expansion (2010–2014) (Elliott, 2011; Amadeo, 2018).
During this period, non-performing loans increased significantly in the EU banking sector.
Romania and Hungary were in the top-six countries regarding the ratio of non-performing
loans, exceeding 15 percent to total gross loans in 2012 (Pawlowska, 2015). However, the two
countries have different banking sector structures: in Romania, more than 90 percent of the
bank assets are held by institutions with foreign capital while in Hungary, this indicator is only
around 50 percent (European Banking Federation, 2017). Based on the different banking
structures, both foreign and domestic banks advertising strategies were analyzed.

Data collection and sample

Two leading daily and weekly newspapers from Romania and Hungary were selected for
the content analysis, based on content topic coverage, and audience figures. From each
country a general coverage, high audience newspaper was chosen: Evenimentul Zilei from
Romania and Népszabadság from Hungary; plus another one from each country with
economic and business content: Ziarul Financiar from Romania and HVG from Hungary.
The choice of the two different content types of newspapers ensured that all advertising
campaigns targeting either final consumers or businesses were recorded.
All of the financial service advertisements were collected from these publications which
appeared between 2006 and 2014. Each advertisement was photographed and then registered
into an Excel database, mentioning the name of the publication, date, page number, column,
campaign name and code, bank name and print size. A total of 5,858 ads were recorded in the
mentioned journals from financial service companies: 3,593 from the Romanian newspapers
and 2,265 from the Hungarian newspapers. After eliminating the duplicates (when one
advertisement appeared multiple times or in both publications) and the advertisements of
other financial service providers than banks (mainly insurance companies and other
non-banking financial institutions) a sample of 1,520 unique advertisements were obtained.
Six of them were also eliminated because they did not have a clear appeal, or they displayed
only the trademark or the brand name of the bank. After this procedure, the final sample
contains 1,514 unique ads, 760 from Romania and 754 from Hungary (Table II). In total,

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Total

Hungary 99 128 151 121 94 60 37 33 31 754

Table II. Romania 101 112 157 95 106 69 35 35 50 760
Sample characteristics Total 200 240 308 216 200 129 72 68 81 1,514
79 percent of the advertisements belong to banks which operate internationally, therefore Bank
allowing, to some extent, generalizations to be made from the results. These advertisements advertising
belong to 40 banks from Romania and 22 banks from Hungary, 74 percent of them operating
on the international market. They represent more than half of the banks in the two countries.
The peak of the advertising activity was between 2006 and 2010; after that, the number of
print campaigns has declined significantly in both countries.
1555
Coding procedure and content analysis framework
A coding framework was developed by authors, containing nominal and dichotomous
variables. The campaign’s name was registered, together with the year, hosting bank, the
type of product and service, the target market (consumers (B2C), business (B2B), both or
other stakeholders) and the advertising appeals. In the final analysis, a set of 10 product and
service types were defined and included in the analysis: B2C home loan, B2C personal loan,
B2C credit card, B2B loan, B2C service, B2B service, savings, current account and card,
event and PR and CSR, and branding. The different target segments in case of the loans and
services mean implicitly different product types (investment loans, operating loans,
consultancies in B2B, home loans, personal loans, internet banking, payment services, etc. in
B2C). Current account and savings services targeted the final consumers while branding
and event and PR and CSR targeted various ranges of segments. The advertising appeals
were coded dichotomously based on Pollay’s 42 (Pollay, 1983) appeals, they got value 1 if
they were present, and 0 if they were absent.
The 1,514 advertisements were coded independently by two coders who are Romanian-born
and residents but are also native Hungarian speakers, so content analysis was accurate for
commercials in both languages in terms of language distortions. Once, the coding framework
was developed, and in order to ensure the reliability of the data, the two coders received
training on the content analysis method, the coding framework and Pollay’s (1983) set of
appeals. They received a detailed description of the identification variables, such as bank name,
product type, and a full list of the possible concepts and appeals which can occur in each appeal
category from Pollays’ list. In addition, during the coding procedure, any issues and
particularities were discussed. For example, many advertisements used the appeal that the
product can be customized as the client wants; this kind of message was included in the
“independence” appeal. Also, the professionalism of the service provider was a frequently
encountered message, which was included in a “wisdom” appeal. While in many cases financial
service advertisements are required to disclose messages regarding the risk, safety, price, yield,
duration, and many other features of the offer (EU-Directive 2014/17/EU), coders were asked to
register at most three dominant appeals if necessary, those which are evidenced in the headline
and main product presentation, not in the disclosure. Multi-appealed messages have been
identified widely in financial service advertising literature (Ahn et al., 2012; Underwood et al.,
2015). In the end, the average message number per advertisement identified in the present
sample was 1.67.
The reliability of the coding procedure was verified for the appeal variables, because of
their highly interpretive nature. The product type variable used in the present research was
a relatively objective criterion. For the top ten most frequently used appeals entered into the
final analysis, an overall agreement of 95.7 percent was calculated, the extent of agreement
varying from 92.4 to 98.6 percent. For more sophisticated reliability checks, the Perreault
and Leigh’s (1989) index (Ir) was used in re-calculations. The “Ir” also returned high values,
ranging from 92.0 to 98.6 percent. Also, Krippendorff’s α was used for calculating for all the
decisions made during the coding of the appeals. The threshold for Krippendorff’s α is
α⩾0.800 (Krippendorff, 2004) so that in this case, α ¼ 0.82. All these measures indicate high
data reliability and validity. All disagreements in coding procedure were discussed and
resolved by the two coders.
IJBM The data were registered in Microsoft Excel datasheets, then imported into SPSS statistic
37,7 program. After the initial coding procedure, a new variable was created. Based on Albers-
Miller and Stafford’s (1999a) appeal classification, each appeal was categorized as either
informational or transformational. A total of 30 different appeals were identified by the
coders from Pollay’s (1983) 42 advertising appeals set (Table III).

1556 Results and discussion

The content analysis of the 1,514 ads revealed the use of 2,534 appeals. This means that, on
average, each ad contained 1.67 appeals. The study shows that the following ten appeals are
specific to bank advertising, each representing at least 3 percent from the total appeals used:
“affiliation,” “cheap,” “convenient,” “distinctive,” “effective,” “enjoyment,” “nurturance,”
“productivity,” “safety” and “wisdom.” The first ten appeals represent 86 percent of the total
appeals used. In the sample, a total of 12 informational and 18 transformational appeals
were identified from Pollay’s list of 42 (Table IV ).
Six appeals are consistent with Albers-Miller and Straughan’s (2000) findings: “cheap,”
“convenient,” “effective,” “productivity,” “safety” and “wisdom,” all of which are
informational appeals. The other four appeals revealed new specific appeals for bank
advertising, such as: “distinctive,” “enjoyment,” “nurturance” and “affiliation.” The
difference between appeal lists could be explained by the fact that the studies considered a
variety of countries: Japan, Taiwan, Israel, France, Finland, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and USA
rather than just Romania and Hungary. The most frequently used appeals in sample were
informational appeals, such as “productivity” (42 percent of the ads consisted of it,
representing 25 percent of the total ads), “convenient” (20 percent of the ads used it,
representing 12 percent of the total appeals), “cheap” (19 and 11 percent, respectively),
“effective” (14 and 9 percent from all appeals) and “safety” (12 and 7 percent), emphasizing

Informational appeals Transformational appeals

Cheap, convenient, durable, effective, independence, Adventure, affiliation, community, distinctive,

modern, natural, productivity, safety, tamed, enjoyment, family, magic, maturity, morality,
technological, wisdom nurturance, ornamental, plain, popular, relaxation,
Table III. security, status, traditional, young
List of appeals Source: Albers-Miller and Stafford (1999a)

Appeals Frequency of the appeals % of the total appeal % of the advertised products

1. Productivity 636 25 42
2. Convenient 306 12 20
3. Cheap 281 11 19
4. Effective 218 9 14
5. Safety 176 7 12
6. Distinctive 167 7 11
7. Wisdom 127 5 8
8. Affiliation 105 4 7
9. Nurturance 86 3 6
10. Enjoyment 78 3 5
Other appeals 354 14 23
Table IV. Informational 1,879 74 124
Top 10 appeals used Transformational 655 26 43
in sample Total 2,534 100 1,514/100
service quality and financial value (Table IV ). Of the total appeals used 74 percent were Bank
informational appeals, and 26 percent transformational. advertising
According to the hypotheses and the quadrants of the proposed managerial framework
(Figure 1), it is expected that informative, service quality and innovativeness-related appeals
are specific to high involvement financial products (H1a, H1b); habitual, financial value-
related appeals are used in case of low-involvement financial products (H2a, H2b, H2c);
affective appeals are used in high-involvement corporate branding ads (H3), while 1557
satisfaction appeals are used in case of low-involvement events and other PR
announcements (H4).
In order to outline these services-appeals quadrants, a multivariate cluster analysis was
performed to capture the co-occurrence of multiple appeals and products in the same group.
For this purpose, an SPSS TwoStep Cluster Analysis was conducted on the ad sample using as
input the ten most frequently used appeals. The Two-Step Cluster method with log-likelihood
distance was considered suitable because it can handle large samples and perform well with
nominal data (SPSS, 2001). It has been identified as one of the most accurate methods, tested on
different data sets (Gelbard et al., 2007). Whereas the method is sensitive to the case-order, two
analyses were performed to ensure that the order of the cases did not influence the results.
After the first clustering procedure, the sample was mixed randomly, and another Two-Step
clustering procedure was ran. Of the total cases, a 94.2 percent membership was consistent
across the two procedures. The initial cluster membership was saved as a new variable, and a
series of χ2 tests were performed to investigate the homogeneity of the clusters in terms of
appeals and product types. χ2 testing is often used in content analysis-based researches
(Huhmann and Bhattacharyya, 2005; Lee et al., 2011; Ahn et al., 2012).
It was found that the four clusters describe the distribution of the sample by appeals well.
The first cluster integrates financial value appealed ads, like “convenient” (74.8 percent within
appeal) and “cheap” (80.8 percent within appeal). The second cluster includes affective
appeals, such as “affiliation” (99 percent), “distinctive” (89.8 percent), “enjoyment” (80.8
percent), “nurturance,” (68.6 percent) and “wisdom” (75 percent). However, the “wisdom”
appeal is classified as an informational message, but the cross-tab analysis (Table V ) revealed
that it resonates well with the affective messages under the umbrella of the branding
advertisements. The third cluster represents informative appeals on savings-specific product
quality, such as “safety” (83 percent within appeal) and “productivity” (63.4 percent of the
appeal). Finally, the fourth cluster is fully dedicated to the “effective” appeal (90.4 percent),

Think (Rational, informational) Feel (Emotional, transformational)

Informative (Economic) – appeals: Affective appeals for psychological
Productivity, safety, effective, products:
wisdom, technological, modern Distinctive, family, nurturance,
Quality and Innovativeness ornamental, relaxation, traditional,
High
dimension neat, independence.
involvement
Ad object: Atmospherics and family dimension
Loans, Savings Ad object:
H1 Corporate Brand
H3
Habitual (Responsive) – appeals: Satisfaction (Social) appeals:
Convenient, cheap Affiliation, popular
Financial value dimension Atmospherics dimension
Low Ad object: Ad object:
involvement Credit cards, Events and PR and CSR Figure 1.
Current account and card H4 Financial services
Services specific appeals based
H2 on Pollay’s values
categorized in
Sources: Own construction, based on Vaughn (1986), Pollay (1983) and Albers-Miller the FCB grid
and Straughan (2000)
IJBM Clusters
37,7 1 2 3 4
Reliable Functional
Financial Emotional service service quality Total Total
value (%) (%) quality (%) (%) (%) n χ2

Appeals
1558 Cheap 80.8 2.5 5.7 11.0 100 281 572.51*
Convenient 74.8 11.1 3.9 10.1 100 306 504.15*
Affiliation 1.0 99.0 0.0 0.0 100 105 242.25*
Distinctive 8.4 89.8 0.0 1.8 100 167 303.67*
Enjoyment 19.2 80.8 0.0 0.0 100 78 101.75*
Wisdom 2.4 75.6 0.0 22.0 100 127 167.54*
Nurturance 1.2 68.6 0.0 30.2 100 86 110.57*
Safety 1.7 10.8 83.0 4.5 100 176 264.71*
Productivity 14.8 20.0 63.4 1.9 100 636 595.90*
Effective 0.0 9.2 0.5 90.4 100 218 1,350.52*
Products and services
B2C Home loan 62.0 8.0 16.0 14.0 100 150 956.123*
B2C personal loan 52.8 11.8 21.3 14.2 100 127
Current account and card 40.5 26.0 22.1 11.5 100 131
B2C credit card 34.2 24.1 29.1 12.7 100 79
Events and PR and CSR 0.0 94.0 4.5 1.5 100 67
Branding 0.0 75.1 4.9 20.0 100 185
B2C service 36.0 43.0 9.3 11.6 100 86
B2B service 26.3 35.4 10.1 28.3 100 99
Table V. Savings 10.6 21.4 65.8 2.3 100 473
The composition of Loan B2B 34.2 14.5 12.0 39.3 100 117
the appeal clusters Note: *p o0.001

representing the product’s functional quality. All of the appeal allocations in the four clusters
are statistically significant (Table V ).
The clusters revealed are slightly different, as hypothesized in the conceptual model.
The “Informative” quadrant of the model is sectioned in two: cluster 3 and cluster 4, both
of which employ Informative messages, but different ones. All appeals fallen into these
two clusters are categorized by Albers-Miller and Straughan (2000) as service quality
messages. Thus, the quadrant has been split in half, cluster 3 consisting of appeals which
promise reliable products regarding the service quality, emphasizing the long-term
benefits of the products, such as “safety” and “productivity,” being named reliable service
quality, and cluster 4 offer financial products with instant functionality, being named
functional service quality.
The “Habitual” quadrant of the proposed managerial framework was identified during
the cluster analysis by cluster 1, and this set of messages were named financial value cluster
after Albers-Miller and Straughan (2000). For the “Affective” and “Satisfaction” quadrants
there has been found only one cluster (cluster 2), which encompasses all the emotional
appeals, and have been named emotional cluster.
Once the ads were distributed into four clusters based on appeals, the incidence of the
different products was checked across the clusters. It can be concluded that the financial
value appeals cluster contains the B2C home loan (62.0 percent of the total home loan), B2C
personal loan (52.8 percent) the B2C current account and card (40.5 percent) products.
However, the B2C credit card has a high frequency in cluster 2 (24.1 percent) and cluster
three (29.1 percent) as well. The second, emotional cluster includes the branding
(75.1 percent), the events and PR and CSR (94 percent) advertisements and the B2C
(43 percent) and B2B (35.4 percent) services. Nevertheless, a significant amount of B2C Bank
services falls into the first cluster (36 percent), and a significant amount of B2B services into advertising
first (26.2 percent) and fourth clusters (28.3 percent). The third cluster is represented by
savings products (65.8 percent). The fourth cluster is owned by the B2B loans (39.3 percent),
but B2B loans also have a significant amount (34.2 percent) in cluster 1.
The results of the cluster analysis and the distribution of the appeals and products in the
clusters have been represented on a cluster map (Figure 2). Each circle meant to represent a 1559
quadrant of appeals, respectively product from the proposed conceptual model (Figure 1).
For this intermediate step, the circle format, instead of quadrants, was chosen because it is
more expedient to draw intersecting sets of items. However, the results did not support the
existence of two different clusters for “Satisfaction” and “Affective” appeals, only one large
cluster including all the affective appeals was identified. Thus, only one circle was allocated
to all emotional appeals. Furthermore, as two different clusters were identified for the
informative quadrant (reliable service quality and functional service quality), the circle
designated to it were split into two halves.
The positioning of the items inside the circles takes into consideration the distribution
of each element among the four clusters. While the appeals show clear cluster membership
(Figure 2, left side), in case of certain products categorized into the appeal clusters show a
strong presence in more than one cluster (e.g. B2B services, B2C services, B2C credit
cards) (Table V ). Where a significant amount of the studied product fell into more than
one cluster, that item was placed in the intersection of those clusters to which it belongs
(Figure 2, right side).
Putting together the two pieces of the cluster map and analyzing the cluster membership
χ2 tests, the hypotheses can be evaluated as follows. H1a predicted that advertisements of
savings employ informative, service-quality related appeals. Results show that the reliable
service quality cluster encompass “safety” (83 percent of safety appeals, χ2 ¼ 264.71,
p o0.001) and “productivity” (63 percent of productivity appeals, χ2 ¼ 595.90, p o0.001)
appeals, and 65.8 percent of the savings products fall into this cluster, which support the
H1a hypothesis. On the other hand, H1b also expected more informative messages for loan
products. The cluster analysis revealed another informative cluster, based on “effective”
appeal (90.4 percent, χ2 ¼ 1,350.52, p o0.001), but neither the reliable service quality nor the
functional service quality cluster are dominant for the loan products, except for the B2B
loans. In total, 39.3 percent of the B2B loans apply functional service quality messages.
Therefore, the H1b hypothesis is partially supported, only in case of B2B loans. The absence

Cluster 3 Cluster 3
Reliable service Reliable service
quality quality
Safety Savings
Cluster 4 Cluster 4
Productivity
Functional Functional
service quality service quality
Wisdom Cluster 2
Effective Emotional
Nurturance B2B loan
Cluster 2 B2B service Branding
Emotional
B2C Credit card
Affiliation Events and
Distinctive PR and
Convenient Enjoyment Current account and Card CSR
B2C Personal loan B2C service
Cheap Figure 2.
B2C Home loan
Appeals (left) and
Cluster 1 Cluster 1 products (right)
Financial value Financial value cluster maps
IJBM of the personal loans from this category, and their presence in the financial value cluster
37,7 (52 percent of the B2C personal loans) is not necessarily surprising since they are contracted
for a shorter period and could be purchased based on limited product features like the price
or on the ease of the application. In the studied period, especially in 2007–2008, the demand
for home loans was very high, and the price of the loans was a frequently used
competitiveness tool by the banks. After the recession of 2008, the banks tried to attract the
1560 competitors’ clients with cheaper refinancing mortgage loans. This specific behavior could
be reflected in the present cluster maps, where B2C home loan ads also use financial value
messages (62 percent of them) instead of service quality ones.
H2a, H2b and H2c predicted that credit cards, current accounts and cards, respectively
other services (e.g. internet banking, consultancy) are advertised by financial value messages.
Cluster analysis revealed a clear financial value cluster, dominated by “cheap” (80.8 percent,
χ2 ¼ 572.51, po0.001) and “convenient” (74.8 percent, χ2 ¼ 504.15, po0.001) messages. The
highest amount of credit card ads (34.2 percent) belongs to this cluster, which supports H2a.
However, the second highest share in credit card advertisement has the functional service
quality cluster. The highest amount of current account and card messages (40.5 percent) also
belongs to the financial value cluster, supporting H2b. Contrary to the H2c, for both the B2B
and B2C service advertisements the emotional cluster proved to be dominant, instead of
financial value message cluster. However, for the B2C services, the second most representative
message cluster is the financial value one (36 percent), while for B2B messages the functional
service quality cluster (28.3 percent), underlining a rather mixed messages strategy.
The H3 supposed that corporate branding ads should apply emotional messages,
specific for high involvement decisions, while H4 expected, that event and PR and CSR
advertisements use mostly low involvement satisfaction messages. The cluster analysis did
not distinguish between these two clusters and has created a single, dominantly emotional
appealed cluster (99 percent of the “affiliation” appeals, χ2 ¼ 242.25, p o0.001; 89.8 percent
of the “distinctive” appeals χ2 ¼ 303.67, p o0.001; 80.8 percent of the “enjoyment” appeals,
χ2 ¼ 101.75, p o0.001; 75.6 percent of the “wisdom” appeals χ2 ¼ 167.54, p o0.001;
68.6 percent of the “nurturance” χ2 ¼ 110.57, p o0.001). This cluster includes the corporate
brand and the corporate event announcing ads, and the majority of the B2B and B2C service
ads. This support only partially the H3 and H4, in terms of emotional message dominance,
but the involvement level for different advertising targets could not be identified.
After the cluster analysis and the hypothesis testing, the proposed managerial
framework was re-examined and adjusted. The matching appeal – service pairs were
allocated into quadrants of the proposed managerial framework (Figure 3). As for
high-involvement/think quadrant, two clusters were found (cluster 3 and 4) but emphasizing
different aspects of the quality of the services, in this quadrant, these two clusters were
combined under the name of informational – service quality message strategy. The low-
involvement/think quadrant were clearly identified by the cluster analysis, therefore the
Financial value cluster turned into informational – financial value message strategy
quadrant. While the cluster analysis could not distinguish differences between
high-involvement/feel and low-involvement/feel quadrants, these two were represented in
the managerial framework as one larger quadrant under the name of emotional message
strategy. The results also suggest some overlap between the clusters and product categories
whose advertising strategy is located at the border of two or three clusters. Thus, even
though they have a slightly dominant cluster membership, their presence in a second or
third cluster is also high; this is the case with regard to B2B and B2C services, the B2C credit
cards, already represented in cluster map (Figure 2, right side). These findings suggest, that
it would be desirable that the advertising guidelines for these service categories propose a
mixed message strategy. This means that, depending on the context, the advertisement for
these products could use either informational or emotional messages or even a mix of them.
 Think Feel Bank
1. Informational - Service 3. Emotional advertising
quality Affiliation, Distinctive,
Safety, Productivity, Effective Enjoyment, Wisdom,
High Nurturance
Involvement Savings
B2B Loans 4. Mixed
B2B services 1561
Branding
B2C credit
Current account and cards Events and PR
card B2C services and CSR
Personal loan
Low Home loans
Involvement
2. Informational - Financial
value
Cheap, Convenient Figure 3.
Managerial framework
for bank advertising
Source: Own construction

Therefore, a fourth quadrant was drawn in the centre of the managerial framework, named
informational-emotional mixed message strategy which represents the overlapping areas of
the cluster maps.
Based on the four quadrants of the managerial framework, clear advertising guidelines
could be formulated for each:
• Quadrant 1: informational – service quality message strategy applicable to savings
and B2B loan products; savings should be advertised with “productivity” and
“safety” appeals; B2B loans should be advertised with “effective” appeal.
• Quadrant 2: informational – financial value message strategy applicable to current
account and card, personal loan and home loans products; they should be advertised
with “cheap” and “convenient” appeals.
• Quadrant 3: emotional message strategy suitable for corporate branding and
different events organized by the bank; corporate brands should be advertised
mostly with “affiliation,” “wisdom,” “distinctive” and “nurturance” appeals while
events and PR and CSR should be advertised mostly with “nurturance” and
“enjoyment” appeals.
• Quadrant 4: informational-emotional mixed message strategy applicable to B2B
services, B2C credit cards and B2C services; B2B services should be advertised with
“wisdom,” “effective” and “convenient” appeals; B2C credit cards with “cheap” and
“convenient”; B2C services with “convenient” and “distinctive” appeals.

Conclusions and managerial implications

This research identified special appeals for financial services with a different level of
involvement and for corporate branding in order to increase the effectiveness of bank
advertisements. The study is based on content analysis of advertisements belonging to
40 banks from Romania and 22 banks from Hungary published in national magazines
between 2006 and 2014. The study tested the match between banks’ practices and the
theory grounded in the FCB grid advertisement planning. The results offer new
theoretical contributions in advertising research and clear managerial guidelines in
planning bank advertisements.
IJBM From the theoretical viewpoint, results indicate that sectorial homogeneity assumption in
37,7 advertising research may be misleading, at least in case of the financial services. Therefore,
financial services should be classified according to their level of involvement and think/feel
purchasing style.
The most important contribution of this paper is connecting the banks’ specific appeals
with different bank service categories as follows. First, the study extended the list of appeals,
1562 specific for the financial services, identified by previous studies. The top ten appeals specific
for banks’ advertisements were: “productivity,” “convenient,” “cheap,” “effective,” “safety,”
“distinctive,” “wisdom,” “affiliation,” “nurturance” and “enjoyment.” Six appeals are consistent
with Albers-Miller and Straughan’s (2000) (“cheap,” “convenient,” “affective,” “productivity,”
“safety,” and “wisdom”) and nine appeals (except “enjoyment”) with Alt and Săplăcan (2019)
findings. Overall, informational appeals are more characteristic for banks than emotional
appeals, which is consistent with previous studies (Albers-Miller and Stafford, 1999a, b) and
with the theory of the ELM (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). While emotional appeals have the role
to attract customer attention, the informational appeals have a role in supporting the
purchasing process (Mogaji et al., 2018). Second, including Pollay’s appeal for the first time
into the FCB grid, more detailed analysis and recommendations could be formulated at
appeals level for advertisement planning. The specific dimension of financial services
advertisement (Albers-Miller and Straughan, 2000) was also revealed in the FCB grid.
Consequently, this study integrates previous results regarding bank and services
advertisements into a single model and can offer an analytic framework for further research.
The proposed managerial framework also provides valuable guidelines for decision
makers. The results show that various banking products should be advertised differently. The
FCB grid could be used partially in planning advertisements for different banking products.
However, there are two miss-matches between the theory of FCB grid recommendation and
the bank practices: in case of loans for the B2C market and in case of events and PR and CSR
activities. In the first case, banks positioned the personal and home loans as routine products,
however, according to the theory they should be positioned as infrequently purchased
products. In the second case, in practice, it is impossible to differentiate between two
categories of products regarding emotional appeals (as in the FCB grid) because all
advertisements from this category have the same object: to improve bank-image.
In conclusion, four types of message strategies were identified during the study, which links
advertising appeals to different banking services. The following advertisement guidelines were
formulated: savings and loans for B2B should be advertised with informational – service
quality message strategy: savings with “productivity” and “safety” appeal; loans with
“effective” appeals. Current account and card, personal and home loan are advertised with
informational – financial value message strategy using appeals like “cheap” and “convenient.”
Corporate brand and different events organized by the banks in order to improve bank image
should be advertised with emotional message strategy using appeals such as “affiliation,”
“distinctive,” “enjoyment,” “wisdom” and “nurturance.” The last category of products includes
B2B services, B2C credit cards and B2C services, which should be advertised with
informational-emotional mixed message strategy using appeals such as: “wisdom,” “effective,”
“convenient” and “distinctive.” While the FCB grid is quite promising in providing advertising
message guidelines for banks, further investigation is recommended. For example,
unexpectedly, the personal and home loan for the B2C market advertisement messages were
found to be related to financial values rather than service quality. Also, the service category is
quite heterogeneous, so that more detailed analysis is recommended. The present study
focused only on the message strategy of the ads. The creative strategy should be further
investigated. The investigation of the advertising regarding the target market (B2B or B2C)
and the product life-cycle could reveal new insights also. Finally, a replication of the study for
other media and other countries could better support the universality of the results.
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Further reading
Abernethy, A.M. and Butler, D.D. (1992), “Advertising information: services versus products”, Journal
of Retailing, Vol. 68 No. 4, pp. 398-419.
Ennew, C. and Waite, N. (2007), Financial Services Marketing, Elsevier, Oxford.

Corresponding author
Mónika Anetta Alt can be contacted at: monika.alt@econ.ubbcluj.ro

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