Correspondence: Margit Raich, Department for Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria. Tel: +43 (0)512 507 7181; Fax: +43 (0)512 507 2968; E-mail: margit.raich@uibk.ac.at

¹is Lecturer and Assistant Professor at the Department for Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism, University of Innsbruck, Austria. Her primary teaching and research interests lie in strategic management, leadership and qualitative research methods. She is author of many articles and has presented her research activities at international conferences.

²is Brand Manager at Tiroler Sparkasse AG and teaches corporate communication and brand management at the Department for Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism, University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Received 25 September 2007; Revised 25 September 2007; Published online 9 November 2007.

Abstract

Market developments in the financial industries have forced banks to rethink their strategic positioning. One possibility for achieving uniqueness in the retail banking market is to develop an explicit brand strategy. If service quality and customer relationships, which have been identified as essential elements for the enduring success of retail banks, are the key characteristics of brand strategy, a customer-oriented culture is needed to transfer the brand principles. If the experiences concerning the services are insufficiently rewarding, the customers can be expected to break their relationships with the bank. To guarantee an optimal service quality, it will be helpful to measure the services offered by identifying the strengths and the weaknesses in the performances concerning the brand strategy. For this reason, mystery shopping can be used to analyse the perceived quality of the delivery of services. The paper uses a short literature review about brands linked with service quality and presents a case study with the objective of emphasising the importance of measuring service quality. In the end the authors discuss the significance of developing a coherent concept for the implementation of the communicated and intended contents of a brand by the employees.