Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

encapsulate the reaction to the characteristics of the servicescape (our topic) as observed andexperienced by the banks‘ clients and employees. Permission was obtained in written form fromthe three banks which were the site of the interviews. The two private banks were EBL BankLimited and AB Bank Limited; and the government owned bank was BASIC Bank Limited. Allthe interviewees were interviewed in the Gulshan business district of Dhaka, the capital and thelargest city in Bangladesh. The bank branches were all situated in the same business district andwere located within a 10 minute walking distance of each other. Each of the bank branches hadwell developed servicescapes and highly visible interior and exterior branding. With theexception of Basic Bank Limited (which is a Bangladesh government owned bank) all the banksutilized the brand colors to good effect: the furniture and walls of the interior layout and serviceareas sported the brand colors in a manner which will not fail to make the customers considerthese colors along with the prominently displayed (often highly stylized) logo of the brand. Of the24 clients of the bank who responded 16 were male and 8 were female. In case of the employees4 employees were female and 2 were male (of the 6 bank employees who were interviewed). Themale interviewees were aged between 26 and 57 whilst the female were aged between 30 and 43.Researchers were provided with a quiet sitting area at the location of each bank branches whereinthey conducted the mini-depth interviews on a one to one basis. Written consent was obtainedfrom the interviewees and prior to that they were provided a brief on the purpose of the interviewand how it would be conducted. The interviews were conducted over a period of four weeks withactive assistance of three graduate students of BRAC University who helped in conducting theinterviews.Each interviewee were prompted on the items of the servicescape construct in the Hightowerframework and requested to comment on the item. When it came to questions of symbolicinterpretation and researchers wanted to delve deep, they asked probing questions such as ‗Whatdo you mean by ―interesting‖?‘ and ‗Why did you think that this place would not be ―chaotic‖?‘etc.Research Design and Method (Singapore)Two retail banks were chosen as the empirical site for this study because this sector is underrepresentedin the literature at present. To keep the research tractable, the study was limited to asingle country. Desk-based reviews of the literature were undertaken; at the same time, it wasnoted by the researchers that corporate branding and image within retail banking sector waschanging in practical terms. Our project is thus a first step towards addressing gaps in theliterature as well as in practice.