Designing a Social Branding Model of the Banking Industry in Social Networks

Today, banks are facing a serious challenge in relation to social branding activities on social networks. Because on one hand, customers are pessimistic about branding activities on social networks, and on the other hand, fierce competition has led banks to look for a tool to maintain their competitive advantage. Although some studies have pointed to the importance of social responsibility as one of the dominant social tools in branding activities on social networks, little research has been done on how a social brand is built with the help of these policies on social networks; Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to design a social branding model of the banking industry in social networks. The present research is in an applied, mixed and cross-sectional research with an inductive approach. The statistical population of the study in the qualitative part consists of bank managers and university professors and in the quantitative part, 384 Sepah Bank customers who are members of social networks. The questionnaire was used to collect data. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by content validity and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. To analyze the data, first the Grand Theory method was used, and then the main and secondary factors in branding have been identified. Then, in order to rank and evaluate the components affecting branding, a combined model of fuzzy hierarchical analysis and fuzzy DEMATEL technique has been used. The results of Grand Theory method showed that structural, behavioral, environmental factors, processes, output, outcome and effect and sub-components related to each factor are the main factors on branding. The results of the integrated model to prioritize, determine the intensity of impact and effectiveness and drawing a causal diagram between the components of the research showed that among the main factors of the research, the behavioral factor has gained the highest rank. The behavioral factor, which ranks first in weighting the fuzzy hierarchical analysis approach, also has the highest weight in the fuzzy DEMATEL method and is in maximum interaction with other criteria; therefore, due to its greater effectiveness, it is considered a disabled criterion. The final result of prioritization showed that the effect factor is the least important factor in branding and on the other hand, behavioral factors are determined as the most important factor in branding. This finding emphasizes that banks must properly identify and pay special attention to behavioral factors before taking any action.