Sample

3.4.2.1 Geographic boundaries

The aim of this research is to explore the role of social media in the bank marketing in the SEE region. The region of the SEE is a subject of various definitions in terms of its geographical boundaries, which include anywhere from 10 to 18 countries, depending on the context (economic, political, cultural or historical). The countries most commonly included under this abbreviation are: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Romania (with Austria, Italy, Cyprus, Kosovo, Ukraine and Turkey occasionally also referred as the part of the SEE region by some EU bodies and programs) (European Commission, 2007).

One of the first decisions pertaining to identifying the sample of banks for the longitudinal observation was determining the geographical boundaries of the study. For the purposes of this research the study opted to limit its scope within the boundaries of 6 countries of the SEE region: Albania, Bulgaria, FYROM, Greece,

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Romania and Serbia. The reasons for confining the bank sample within the parameters of these countries were strategic.

Firstly, this study was designed as a part of a larger research on the role of social media in bank marketing (which entails a total of three studies with different populations: study examining banks’ social media pages, study examining managerial perspectives of banks’ decision makers and study examining perspectives of banks’ customers). Following the outlines of the research design, the purpose of this study was to complement other studies and to corroborate their findings. Thus, a common framework in terms of geographical boundaries had to be established for all three studies in order to enable coherence and reflection of the findings.

Researcher anticipated to have a limited access to the population of banks and bank customers for the purposes of case studies and focus groups. The access to the population of banks and the population of bank customers extended to the countries of Albania, Bulgaria, FYROM, Greece, Romania and Serbia. Thus, the confines of the sample accessibility of other studies were projected to this study as well, and conscious decision was made to limit the scope of the study to the geographic region of the six aforementioned countries in order to establish common geographic grounds for the research as a whole.

Nevertheless, the choice of the countries selected as the focus of this study included nations identified in the related literature as interesting cases for the research in banking (Anayiotos et al 2010; Andries and Capraru, 2014; Badulescu and Nicolae, 2010; Klimis, 2011). Similar strategy was observed in the study by Fang et al (2011), who chose to asses the banking efficiency in the SEE by focusing on six countries, rather than the whole region: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYROM, Romania and Serbia. Thus, the choice was validated also by the literature.

Secondly, although these geographic confinements notably condensed the size of the banking sector investigated, the composition of the sample was deemed still interesting for the purposes of this research. Countries in the sample included EU- member states (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania), as well as non-EU countries and EU candidates (Albania, Serbia, FYROM), thus providing a healthy mix of examples of the banking realities in the region and an interesting field for exploration of various bank marketing practices.

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Thirdly, this selection of countries was interesting as the banking sector in these countries was tightly interconnected through cross-country presence of large regional and European financial institutions. Many of the large Greek banks (e.g. Piraeus, Alpha Bank, Eurobank) have presence across Albania, Bulgaria, FYROM, Serbia and Romania, thus making observations of the differences and similarities in their marketing practices across these countries interesting. Similarly, European banking groups such as Societe Generale, Credit Agricole, Raiffeisen Bank, OTP etc also had prominent presence in retail banking activities spanning across six countries in the sample. This contributed further to the interest in observing the contrasts and trends in the social media adoption practices across the region.

Thus, these constraints and interests determined the geographic focus of the study. For the ease of readability, however, the “SEE region” as a term is preserved in the remainder of the text, with a note that it refers to the six countries used as the basis of the sample (Albania, Bulgaria, FYROM, Greece, Romania and Serbia).

3.4.2.2 Bank selection criteria

The interest of this research centers on the industry of retail banking. Therefore, one of the first sampling decisions was to identify the retail banking institutions in the SEE region. The first step in this process involved consulting the official websites of the Central Banks of the countries in the sample and obtaining listings of all registered financial banking institutions operating in each respective country. The original list contained 156 banks in total.

The list of banks for each country was refined to exclude banks servicing exclusively corporate clients, as well as banks with presence in the region via representative offices which do not provide services to the mass markets (e.g. ING Bulgaria, Royal Bank of Scotland Romania, Citibank Romania etc.). In order to perform this refinement, researcher visited the official website of each bank on the original list and checked for the evidence of whether bank offered the services to the retail customer segment (e.g. search for terms such as “retail”, “individual”, “mass”, and “physical person”, which indicated retail banking services). (“English” language option embedded in the website and Google Translate online service were used to translate the content of the websites in English, in order to ensure comprehension of the content and correct identification of the bank type.) This initial step helped filter

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out the sample and identify the banks of interest for the purposes of this research. As a result, 141 banks were identified as the sample for this study (please see Appendix A for the detailed listing of the banks in the sample).

This step was necessary, as the title of the bank alone oftentimes did not denote the typology of the organization and the scope of its services. It is important to note that, although several banks in the sample contained the terms “corporate” and “investment” in their titles (e.g. Corporate Commercial Bank, Investbank etc.), there was evidence that within the scope of their operations these banks provided also services to the mass consumer segment. Hence, they were included in the sample. Several authors have noted that some universal typology-related terms such as “universal bank” or “commercial bank” might bear different connotations in different countries due to variations in the banking legislative terms and regulations (Andries and Capraru, 2014; Badulescu and Nicolae 2010). Thus, the screening was necessary in order to make sure that the sample contained all types of banks offering retail services. A bank was included in the sample as long as it provided services to the mass customer segment in the retail sector. Purely internet banks were also included in the sample under the same provisions (e.g. WIN bank Greece and Libra Bank Romania).

The total sample of retail banks included in the first round of observations in mid-2012 was 141: 17 in Albania; 25 in Bulgaria; 16 in FYROM; 20 in Greece; 30 in Romania; 33 in Serbia. This was deemed as a sufficient sample size for the observation study. In comparison, the web-based research by Klimis (2011) on the digital communication practices among European retail banks, contained the sample of 88 banks in total to represent three European regions: Western Europe (46 banks), Central and Eastern Europe (25 banks) and Russia (17 banks). Thus, in comparison, observation study presented here was designed to offer a more concentrated and dense coverage of the social media adoption tendencies among the banks in the SEE region.

The second and third rounds of observations conducted in early 2013 and 2014 included the adjusted number of banks in the sample, in order to reflect the dynamic changes occurring in the banking sector due to the wave of mergers and acquisitions, foreclosures and new entries in the market. Similar strategy was also followed by Fang et al (2011), who allowed for “failures, mergers and de novo entry of banks” (p.

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502) to be reflected in the sample in their study on the bank efficiency in the SEE region for the 1998-2008 period. Thus, in 2013 the sample was adjusted to include 137 retail banks: 17 in Albania, 25 in Bulgaria, 15 in FYROM, 18 in Greece, 30 in Romania, and 32 in Serbia. Furthermore, following turbulent changes in the retail banking market in Greece in 2013, the sample in early 2014 was also adjusted and consisted of 127 banks: 16 in Albania; 25 in Bulgaria; 15 in FYROM; 11 in Greece; 30 in Romania; 30 in Serbia. The timeline of the exits and mergers of banks is provided in the Appendix A to illustrate these changes in the market.