Marketing Audit Report for Commonwealth Bank of Australia | Desklib

This marketing audit report examines CBA's stakeholders, communication methods, and marketing strategies. Recommendations for improvement. | Desklib

Running Head: MARKETING AUDIT REPORT
Marketing Audit report
Student's Name
Institutional Affiliation
Date

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Table of Contents
1.0 Background................................................................................................................................3
2.0 The company’s stakeholders, their interests and requirements.................................................4
2.1 Customers..................................................................................................................................4
2.2 Community................................................................................................................................4
2.3 The people.................................................................................................................................4
3.0 How the company communicates to stakeholders.....................................................................5
3.1 Creating the market....................................................................................................................6
3.2 Annual General Meeting............................................................................................................6
3.3 Creating the brand......................................................................................................................6
3.2 Advertisers.................................................................................................................................7
3.3 Key marketing...........................................................................................................................8
4.0 Recommendations for the company..........................................................................................9
4.1 Originality..................................................................................................................................9
4.2 Applicability............................................................................................................................10
5.0 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12

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1.0 Background
CBA (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) is an Australian transnational financial institution with
its operations in Fiji, New Zealand, USA, United Kingdom, and Asia. The company was
established in 1911 (Adzis, Tripe, & Dunmore, 2010). CBA offers a wide range of monetary
services comprising business, institutional, and retail banking, insurance, and financial
management. The company was awarded the Asian Banker Transaction Banking Awards in
2009, the award which highlights yearly attainments of financial institutional all over the world
recompensing endeavors for product, operational merit, and market share. Sustainability refers to
the fortitude of processes and systems. The key factor in sustainability is viable growth that
include the four unified areas: economics, ecology, culture, and ecology. CBA is an Australian
financial institution that is famous for offering a number of financial and banking services and
products to business, institutional, and retail customers in different nations. The firm offers
banking services and products to many nations such as United Kingdom, New Zealand,
Australia, and Asia Pacific. Diverse forms of banking facilities and products offered by CBA
include savings account, transaction accounts, credit cards, term deposits, home and personal
loans, economic planning facilities; superannuation goods, foods for students and youth, car,
youth, life, loan and credit card security, insurance services, online and global banking facilities,
and income protection. The firm is also famous for offering business banking facilities like credit
cards and business accounts; merchant services, overdrafts to the clients, and business loans.
Moreover, CBA also offers facilities and products for purposes of helping institutional and
corporate customers for handling the liquidity and cash flow (BLICKLE & BROWN, 2018).

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2.0 The company’s stakeholders, their interests and requirements
Commonwealth bank of Australia is dedicated to offering good results for clients, winning back
the society’s trust and confidence, reliably satisfying customer demands and providing long-term
and sustainable value to its shareholders (Otchere & Chan, 2003).
2.1 Customers
Customers in the firm are involved in a number of ways, involving through complaint channels
and customer feedback, workshops, surveys, external dispute resolution organizations, and
customer representative groups. Customers can also contact us via phone, electronically or post.
The firm has a customer activist occupation to support responsibility for rational customer results
and provide a more customer-centered means to the company’s business.
2.2 Community
The Bank’s engagement with its societies offers perceptions into refining products and services
to attain the varying public demands. Commonwealth bank of Australia interacts with members
and community organizations through indirect and direct channels, as well as external
consultative boards, meetings, provision of events and summits, and industry memberships.
2.3 The people
The firm’s recognizes the significance of different personnel and the necessity of people to
reveal to the local communities and customers. It is dedicated to forming and upholding a
comprehensive working culture that offers sustainability to the company and its prospect. The
obligation is voiced in the company’s inclusion and diversity policy and ranges to every part of
the organization including talent development, identification, recruitment, distribution of duties,
Board engagements, employee retention, performance appraisal, promotions, coaching and

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mentoring programs, supple work planning, types of leave offered to workers, knowledge and
expansion, other procedures and policies, and succession planning (Bainbridge, 2015).
Diagram: CBA Stakeholders
3.0 How the company communicates to stakeholders
The company communicates with its stakeholders in variety of ways. The first mode of
communication is multi-channel engagement which includes face-to-face engagement with
stakeholders (Miles, 2012). The bank sets official board meetings with its stakeholders at a
specific time of the year. Secondly, the bank communicates with its customer group of
stakeholders through customer workshops, community group surveys, customer advocates, call
and complaint centers, social media and meetings with relationship managers. Furthermore,
according to Rieves (2012) the bank communicates with its employee stakeholders via group-
wide surveys, Ad-hoc surveys, digital and social platforms, employee meetings, events and town
halls and Group executive mailboxes. Investors get their notifications through annual general
meetings, briefings, surveys, financial and non-financial reporting as well as submissions or

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proposals. The organization communicates through the media in means such as phone calls,
media releases and electronic mail inboxes.
3.1 Creating the market
To ensure that all standards of company performances are met, the bank has some slight
improvements it would realize. First, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia should be made
public in terms of offering services, employment and communication. Levebvre (2012, P.5)
would make it public by employing diverse individuals from all over the globe. These
personalities should be the best in the lines of work to ensure perfection in service lending.
Additionally, communication with stakeholders, bank employees and customers should be done
in a way that a larger populations gets to recognize the bank and its activities. Moreover,
products from the bank and security can be enhanced to improve customer relations with the
company (Noorpoor, Motlaghi & Jafari, 2014).
3.2 Annual General Meeting
The research done reviewed particular sections of the bank and recorded its data in a marketing
audit that focused on the organization, its annual general meetings, its numerous announcements
to customers, shareholders and stakeholders and its digital sense of communication.
3.3 Creating the brand
Queensberry (2016) views that marketers of the organization have since history put significant
focus on acquisition of new customers and recognition of new customers as a source of the
company growth through advocacy. The organization does this by understanding and
appreciating the profile of the customers, changing the mode of communication to a more
personal and direct means and rewarding the customers who are termed loyal in participating in

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Central Bank of Australia activities of the bank. Additionally, the company ensures customer
growth in involving them in the company’s decision making through annual general meetings,
financial reports and the social media. Moreover, the bank has lowered its interest rates from
20% to 16% and still plans to lower them to wow new customers as well as shifting its cultural
setting, diversification and approach to broaden the localities from which its customers originate.
3.2 Advertisers
When a company practices co-creation, it brings about third-party individuals to act as its
advisers. The group of individuals could be made up of consumers of the bank’s products and
services, stakeholders, shareholders, marketers, retailers and distinguished experts in the field of
decision making and giving advices (Tan & Parker, 2016). Co-creation helps the Commonwealth
Bank of Australia in providing all sorts of applicable insights in actual time. These aspects of co-
creation will also aid the company in unleashing high tech features of new and advanced
technologies needed to run the company and wow in new customers for the complete efficiency
of the bank. Co-creation gives the bank demographic information too, as per (Quessenberry,
2016). This means that in the early stages of marketing the products and services of the bank,
young adults might have unlike the product then after a recent analysis, the group loves and
motivates the product. Furthermore, co-creation aids the bank as a marketing research tool.
Because co-creators are in the same position as the rest of the world, they know the kind of
advertising material that people like, the colors the company should include in the advertisement
and the correct individuals to carry out the advertisement. A company can decide to apply a
negative sense of marketing in its activities. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia used the
negative sense of marketing by creating more negative personas. Negative and exclusionary
personas refer to the opposite of a more interested persona of a customer or consumer of the

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bank’s products. According to (Hermansson, 2018), an act by the bank to recognize the group of
people that can never become customers of the organization because of a variety of reasons such
as the people not having a budget or social media presence among others. Secondly, the bank
practices negative marketing by applying a technique called leverage exclusivity. Normally,
when an individual tells someone that they can never have something, the latter would crave and
want it much more. The bank puts a product in market but tell the people that the product is in
scarce and the first only one hundred consumers could have it. The consumers would flock at the
product making it a better marketing technique than all the other techniques. Other techniques
the bank could use to market itself is by creating negative headlines and titles in its
communication platform, craft a connection of people over a shared negative experience, create
universal villains, start and stir up a company controversy and make fun of itself to attract
customers.
3.3 Key marketing
An exchange is a form of a marketplace in which commodities, supplies, derivatives and other
financial instruments are exchanged and traded. The primary function of an exchange is to
ensure an effective, orderly and fair trading and proper extension of a product’s price
information for any difficulties in the exchange. Schoar (2012) states that an exchange gives a
company or the government a platform to sell its securities to another company or the general
public. This platform, for the case of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is a universal
platform where the company sells its securities to the investing stakeholders and the general
public. The exchange for the bank is a physical building located in the city of Australia where
stock exchange markets from all over the world meet to buy and sell securities. Due to currently
more sophisticated markets, the bank also has an electronic exchange which is run at a normal

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rate of 15% exchange with other companies from the United States of America and Europe.
According to Noeth (2012), the importance of an exchange to the company is that it raises its
capital for its growth and expansion of the company’s operations without listings of
requirements. Also, the recognition of the bank in the stock exchange attracts investors to carry
out their banking operations with the company.
4.0 Recommendations for the company
4.1 Originality
Company culture is one of the main topics discussed with the view that it describes the
immediate environment in which employees either win or do not. Hodkinson (2017) asserts the
opinion that a company culture is created by everyday socializations and interactions within the
company and is bound to be dynamic as the organization grows and expands. In particular, the
culture in which the bank operates wholly depends on the values of the community that the bank
is situated. The definition of culture is articulated to the community at large. The culture of the
land has huge impact on the culture and the activities of the bank. Additionally, rules set by the
community adhered to by the company are universal for all the employees, customers,
stakeholders, shareholders and all other employers of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The
culture include the environment in which the employees work, ethics, company mission, goals
and values. As a result, the company culture of the bank helps the employees enjoy their stay at
the workplace as they try to fit in the company while developing good and mutual relations with
the co-workers. Similar to other organizations, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has
corporate inconsistencies or contradictions that hinders smooth running of the company. Giblin
(2013) supports the topic that most of these contradictions are based on the adherence and
respect for the employees’ rights and human rights for the community and the overall population.

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These contradictions include, firstly, is a request by all company employees and the staff for a
simple checklist containing employees’ rights and human rights, distinctive from the rights of the
nation and those of other companies. The second inconsistency that faces the Commonwealth
Bank of Australia is levers of change. This the error made by the bank when they attempt to
connect responsibility with influence. However, this contradiction is minimal for the bank as it
argues that it vast size provides it with leverage with the government or another company. The
third contradiction is the limits of learning where the bank tries to obtain knowledge from the
best practices of other companies by emulating the company without realizing that is actually
nothing to be learned from the other organization. However, the government and other several
similar companies have given numerous attributes to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. This
is because of the success of the company and the good manner in which the company offers
customer care services. The Commonwealth Bank Australia (2014), in their journal, state that the
company is crowned these attributes because of three reasons. First is because of its trust.
Successful companies, like the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, build trust between its
customers and the employees for the betterment of the bank and satisfaction for the customer.
Secondly, the bank obtained these attributes because of its consistency. The company has
realized that customers do not need surprises, rather, they need consistency in their marketing,
presentation of its brand, image, interest rates and pricing. Finally, the bank accounts its
attributes to its consistent loyalty to its customers in terms of keeping their finances and
maintaining its interest rates as well as fair treatment to its employees (Amin, 2016)
4.2 Applicability
Regardless of the size of a company, the body in charge of the firm want to create a brand that
represents the business. A brand is a general effect or a visual impression that is seen, heard or

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experienced by consumers who have used or still use its products. In order to create a brand, the
company has to evaluate the impact that the product has on the general public. The process of
creating a brand starts with defining the purpose of the company. Mullainathan (2012) is of the
opinion that the result will directly aid in defining its brand. Secondly, the brand should be
consistent. This means that the brand should have the same effect on all its customers all over its
perimeter. Thirdly, a feature used by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is that its brand are
differentiated from other brands. The brand is successful in the fact that it creates and develops a
huge gap between itself and other competing companies in the minds of its customers. Usually,
most companies manufacture products that are similar to those of the other companies, the
difference is in the brand. Fourthly, creativity in creation of the brand was warmly welcomed in
the creation of the bank’s brand. The best brand is one that is innovative in its message, ideas and
the medium used in the deliverance. Other factors used by the company to create its brand
include the emotional connection the brand brings to the customers, monitoring and reviewing
the brand as well as the company culture.
5.0 Conclusion
Commonwealth Bank of Australia is a corporate bank that is undoubtedly recognized all over the
world for a large population of customers, stakeholders and shareholders who are treated well
and fairly. The running of the organization is presentable regardless of a minimal number of
contradictions that when corrected, gives the company sounding attributes that should be
emulated by other financial companies. However, the company has to realize certain
improvements to advance in its category. These improvements are based on originality and
applicability. Starting with originality, in the opinion of the researcher, the company should not
compete with other companies in having the highest number of customers by lowering its interest

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rates or raising the cost of marketing but improve the way in which it treats it customers. In
doing so, other customers will naturally realize the work of the bank and invest in the company.
In terms of applicability, the company should identify the need for change, analyze its current
progress, and obtain commitment and support from similar organizations and lastly an
improvement strategy to achieve public recognition and ensure satisfaction to its customers.
References
Adzis, A. A., Tripe, D. W., & Dunmore, P. V. (2010). International Financial Reporting
Standards (IFRS) and Income Smoothing Activities of Banks: Evidence from Australia
and New Zealand Commercial Banks. SSRN Electronic Journal.
doi:10.2139/ssrn.1717307
Amin, M. (2016). Internet banking service quality and its implication on e-customer satisfaction
and e-customer loyalty. International Journal Of Bank Marketing, 34(3), 280-306. doi:
10.1108/ijbm-10-2014-0139
Bainbridge, H. (2015). Devolving people management to the line. Personnel Review, 44(6), 847-
865. doi: 10.1108/pr-10-2013-0193
BLICKLE, K., & BROWN, M. (2018). Borrowing Constraints, Home Ownership and Housing
Choice: Evidence from Intra-Family Wealth Transfers. Journal Of Money, Credit And
Banking. doi: 10.1111/jmcb.12566
GIBLIN, L. F. (2013). The growth of a central bank; the development of the Commonwealth
Bank of Australia, 1924-2013. Melbourne, University Press.
Hermansson, C. (2018). Can self-assessed financial risk measures explain and predict bank
customers’ objective financial risk? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 148,
226-240. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2018.02.018

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Miles, L. (2012). Company stakeholders: their position under the new framework. Amicus
Curiae, 2003(45). doi: 10.14296/ac.v2003i45.1264
MULLAINATHAN, S., NOETH, M., & SCHOAR, A. (2012). The market for financial advice:
an audit study. Cambridge, Mass, National Bureau of Economic Research
New York, Routledge.
Noorpoor, S., Motlaghi, E., & Jafari, M. (2014). Customer Relationship Management, Approach
to Improve Customer Loyalty: Case Study Bank Mellat Tehran. Kuwait Chapter of
Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, 3(10 (a), 102-109. doi:
10.12816/0018661
Otchere, I., & Chan, J. (2003). Intra-industry effects of bank privatization: A clinical analysis of
the privatization of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Journal of Banking &
Finance, 27(5), 949-975. doi: 10.1016/s0378-4266(02)00242-x
QUESENBERRY, K. A. (2016). Social media strategy: marketing and advertising in the
consumer revolution. SAGE Publications
RIEVES, R. A., & LEFEBVRE, J. (2012). Investor relations for the emerging company. New
York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Tan, B., & Parker, G. (2016). Platform Pricing and Investment to Drive Third Party Value
Creation in Two-Sided Networks. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2959165