Case Analysis: Alpen Bank
The main issue that Alpen bank is facing is whether or not they should launch the credit card business in the Romania market and which group of target audience they should select while applying the launching strategy. Moreover, specifically to Carle, he needs to come up with a program from which, Alpen bank can generate at least €5 million in profit within 2 years. Moreover, clarified positioning strategy and customer segmentation is also needed to secure the success of the program.
In the case, it seemed that Alpen had the opportunity to act since economic environment in Romania had changed from 2006 after its entering into the EU: the economy there was developing; a growing trends of luxury purchasing emerged; there was also an increasing likeliness of using card instead of cash; other competitors had already taken similar strategies in the market; Alpen’s traditional banking business had a great penetration throughout the country, etc. However, such a growth was not enough compared with other countries of the region. Besides, to launch the credit card business in Romania might be risky and do harm to the customer base. Then what should Alpen do?
According to the charts 4 & 5 in the appendix, regardless the target audience, launching credit card business in Romania is profitable with the premise that if the customer base is big enough. (All the calculations in the charts were based on revenue potential and acquisition costs.) Comparing between the 2 options, it seemed that choosing affluent customers only would be easier to achieve since number of the required customers of breakeven point with a ROI of 5 million is smaller than that of choosing both middle class and affluent customers. Moreover, as customer base grew, profits of selecting affluent customers only were bigger than those of selecting both middle class and affluent customers