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

spending your time there. I don‘t mind paying the higher fees here at AB Bank.‖ (Fazlul Karim,49, AB Bank customer).―BASIC bank is a good government owned bank, certainly better than most other governmentowned banks; but I do think it could do better if it had employees who were smart and prompt.‖(Rahima Begum, 30, BASIC Bank client)Interviewees were almost unanimously of the view that the banks that had well developedservicescape attracted high net worth individuals and more educated retail banking clientele.They referred to the fact that EBL and AB Bank customers were well behaved, did not createmuch noise and did not demand much time or assistance either from the bank employees or othercustomers of the bank. Thus customers had a perception that other customers that were formingpart of the servicescape were conducive to the sustenance of a good service environment,especially in private banks such as EBL and AB Bank. They did not hold this opinion about thegovernment owned banks. One of the BASIC Bank managers comments ―You have all sorts ofpeople opening an account over here. There are those who are noisy and are not educated enoughto understand even the simplest of banking products. They are hard to handle. (ImranChowdhury, 38, Assistant Manager, BASIC Bank, Gulshan).The design of the servicescape and its aesthetics were perceived as Western design by thecustomers. They compared the well designed servicescapes of EBL and AB Bank to internationalbanks, interiors and brand spaces that they had seen in movies and western soaps. The contrastingof the planned, well designed servicescape of the private local banks to that of the governmentowned local banks made them see the ‗Western‘ and ‗International‘ design aspect of theservicescape more acutely. On the aesthetics of the EBL Bank brand and servicescape theCustomer Services Manager of EBL Bank responds ―We deliberately try to bring an internationaldimension to our products and services; especially our bank interiors are carefully designed toimpress upon the clients that they are experiencing world-class ambience and an excellentatmosphere. They would be telling you that once inside they were unable to say whether theywere in Dhaka or in New York, Hong Kong or Singapore, where some of the best designed bankservicescape could be found. That is also the reason all our employees, regardless of gender, weara Western outfit- business jackets and trousers. We consciously eschew local attire and ethniccostume which can take away from our brand promise and confuse the customer.‖ (SheguftaAfrin, 32, EBL Bank Manager)The interviewees had a heightened sense of brands. All the clients responded that they noticedthat the EBL and AB Bank had a logo which was well designed and were akin to internationalbrands. This positive opinion was not accorded to the logo design of BASIC bank. They also