Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyze the motives, strategy, process and results of corporate rebranding of a company representing banking industry in a view of a few years’ perspective in the context of a long lasting class action lawsuit. Moreover, the paper presents a detailed literary review of a corporate brand and explains its significance. A case-study design of a joint-stock company listed on Warsaw Stock Exchange Main Market in Poland. It comprises of the following sections: company profile, motives of corporate rebranding, process and strategy of corporate rebranding, corporate rebranding and financial performance of chosen indicators. The macroenvironment and microenvironment of the company were also under scrutiny with the use of PEST and content analysis of documents.

The corporate rebranding process was evaluated as a success and the choice of the brand to replace all of the previous brands was evaluated as adequate. The case study analysis proved that the representative action against the bank for including abusive clauses in  Swiss loan contracts was only the beginning of a series of lawsuits against the bank. Extraordinarily high number of pending cases worsened both financial performance and bank’s corporate image and reputation. The paper is a singular case study, which limits the conclusions only to this particular example. However, it implies that such a phenomenon exists and there is a need to verify it on a wider scale. This paper is the first one to analyze corporate rebranding in the shadow of abusive clauses applied by banking institutions. The author did not identify a similar research.