ADVERTISING EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS IN THE PALESTINIAN BANKING SECTOR: A QUEST FOR MEASURING PARAMETERS

Abstract

This research attempted to evaluate and point out the level of bank advertising efficiency and effectiveness in Palestine. Thus, the research concerned itself with studying the importance of external and internal environments, the setting of bank advertising objectives and importance of allocating budget in banks. Moreover, the research, in doing so, identified the difficulties in understanding banks’ advertising message. It also focused on the advertising media selection in Palestine and the evaluation process of bank advertising efforts. In the light of this, the research offered solutions and recommendations to help banks in Palestine to overcome their obstacles and problems. An empirical study was conducted to collect the primary data. The researcher used three questionnaires, the first was for bank managements, the second for advertising agencies, and the third for clients. In addition, the researcher has developed two models: the first for measuring advertising efficiency, and the second for measuring advertising effectiveness. The findings of the study show the following: lack of importance of external and internal environments contributed to inefficiency and ineffectiveness of bank advertising, lack of setting bank advertising objectives contribute to inefficiency and ineffectiveness of bank advertising; non-allocation of budget contributed to inefficiency and ineffectiveness of bank advertising; inefficiency and ineffectiveness of message formulation contributed to ineffectiveness of bank advertising; lack of advertising media contributes to inefficiency and ineffectiveness of bank advertising. Moreover, the unavailability of advertising evaluation contributed to inefficiency and ineffectiveness of bank advertising. Finally, there are significant inter-correlations among the six factors, which influence the effixciency and effectiveness of bank advertising. The research came to the following recommendations: bank management should analyze strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities and threats to adapt themselves to the external and internal environments; bank management should follow scientific methods in setting advertising objectives; it should allocate an annual advertising budget; it should set plans for their advertising messages; it should choose the appropriate advertising media; and it should evaluate bank advertising efforts.