iBusiness, 2013, 5, 47-51
http: //dx.doi.org/10.4236/ib.201 3.53B010 Published Online September 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ib) 47
An Innovative Marketing Model Based on AIDA: - A Case
from E-bank Campus-marketing by China Construction
Bank
Jiangyu Li1, Haibo Yu2
1School of Economic & Business Administration, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; 2Beijing Rep Office, Sun Life
Assurance Company of Canada, Beijing, China.
Received June, 2013
ABSTRACT
In mature marketing, general perception towards AIDA is that most enterprises will lay emphasis directly on value
proposition of a product or services, and encourage clients going to each step of AIDA layers, finally to increase the
total number of final step, say enlarging the number of actual buying action. However to some extent, the efficiency of
such a simple model appears strong ly inadequate. Based on AIDA theory and market feature of universities via e-bank
at China Construction Bank (CCB) , this paper has introduced a new marketing model which present a new value
proposition (new value proposition is attempting to focus on practical-teaching innovation and job competency im-
provement) to accelerate AIDA marketing activities at university market, the outcome further helps to grow AIDA at
bigger market groups. Finding of this paper shows new model greatly improved marketing efficiency of e-bank services
from CCB at university market, and it also unfolds a new persp ective in marketing of the enterprises.
Keywords: Marketing Model; Internet Marketing; AIDA Model; New Value Proposition
1. Introduction
In China, as the deve lopment of in ternet and i ts use appli ed
in business, online payment is becoming a payment
which more and more people tend to rely on. So big
banks have started to shift their focus on ebank services
and regard them as an important strategic transition
towards internet by enhancing market recognition and
market share of E-bank business[1]. In doing do, the 3rd
party payment becomes the main stream in e-payment
process, and has the biggest market share, which bring in
big threat to e-bank services and bank market[2]. Service
identity of banks in China is becoming vaguer which
leads severe competition [3]. Improving cognition of
e-bank and the use of e-bank, and further having more
good-quality customers are the major challenges banks
shall face.
CNNIC survey shows th at maj or internet u sers in China
are the young aged between 20 to 35, among which
mainly are college students [4]. Co llege students, as very
important group of internet users, are experiencing
internet application and internet changes. As main users
in the near future, their using behavior of the in ternet and
choice of online payment will have significant impact on
future market position of banks, in this sense, college
students are one of major targeting groups in e-bank
market. Marketing methods in current banks are still to
use flyers, introduction thru tellers, marketing activity via
internet etc. these traditional ones are good, but also have
shortcomings shown as follows.
People resentment towards flyer ads and salesman, the
promotion of such activities at universities are strictly
controlled in China.
Limitation of the coverage and efficiency at universities.
Online marketing activities and ads lack of features
targeting mainly on college students, so the outcome of
marketing activities and ad s is not good.
Except bank brand, it is hard to identify the difference
between banks and the 3rd party payment in terms of
online services rendered.
It is widely displayed in market strategy of e-bank
services targeted at university market at CCB. As 2nd
largest bank in China, CCB has more power in the market
and bigger market share, and the marketing problems he
faced now actually are the mirror of other banks or banks
they share similar services.
From the above, we can see that the introduction of a
new marketing model is very importance in helping to
improve market effectiveness, especially for college

An Innovative Marketing Model Based on AIDA: - A Case from E-bank Campus-marketing by China Construction Bank
48
students who have typical in times when internet develops
very fast and innovation flushed pushing by internet
development. Based on AIDA marketing theory, the
author anticipated a new marketing model after studying
college students' features in China, and the followed
marketing case, say e-bank service targeted to campus
market at CCB, has given a positive testify to the new
model.
2. Literature Review
2.1. AIDA Model
Modern marketing theory can be shown in AIDA model.
It is a basic movement of the marketing and advertise-
ment resulted from the perception of customers. It was
first developed by E.St. Elmo Lewis in 1898. A, I, D, A
refers to Attention, Interest, Desire and Action respectively.
AIDA is an acronym used in marketing and advertising
that describes a common list of events that may occur
when a consumer engages with an advertisement(see
Figure 1) [5].
 A - Attention (Awareness): attract the attention
of the customer.
 I - Interest: raise customer interest by focusing
on and demonstrating advantages and benefits (instead of
focusing on features, as in traditio nal advertising).
 D - Desire: convince customers that they want
and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy
their needs.
 A - Action: lead customers towards taking action
and/or purchasing.
Based on the needs of AIDA model, the aim of
marketing is to attract the attention from potential clients,
arouse their interest and desire to the final buying action.
By going each step, total number of potential clients will
decrease step by step, becomes an inverted triangle.
Marketing strategy of this model generally is to enlarge
the bottom of the triangle. Or increase the convert rate
(Potential client becomes a real buyer). The barriers are
if just simply enlarging the bottom of the triangle will
increase marketing cost greatly. The inconsistency
between marketing and clients needs or dislike of
marketing itself will reduce the convert rate of entering
next layer of AIDA.
2.2. E-bank Marketing Model at Universities by
CCB
As a pioneer of providin g e-bank service and 2nd largest
bank in China, coupled with their successful strategy on
tradition business, they are confidence in enabling to
build a successful e-bank sales channel, CCB has great
influential power on market, and help rank their e-bank
market into top one in China[16].
Based on AIDA theory, we could consider marketing
process of through AIDA model as marketing model. As
for e-bank marketing business model at CCB (see Figure
2), it is to attract customers’ attention to e-bank services
via various advertisement channels, and further arouse
their interest in accepting and willing to use the service.
The key factors of the corresponding marketing process
are as follows[6].
 Value proposition strengths the convenience and
low cost of personal A/C account management,
e-payment, investment management that e-bank brought
in(referred as Value1 in Figure 2).
 Communications by various advertisement means
such as television , fl y ers, o ut d oo r banners etc.
 Ads contents also help users understand the us-
age of complex e-bank and keep their confidence of us-
ing it.
Salesman, say teller, Telephone service, and account
manager etc. could proactively introduce e-bank service
to potential customers, explain and solve customer’s
problem, which all will help accelerate the “Purchase”
action.
As a major promotion tool, it is also a main method
targeted to campus market. We find no specific difference
between campus market and universe market, so the
foresaid model and corresponding market promotion
activities was set in campus market in hope of enlarging
the scope of attracting as much attention as possible, at
the same time increasing convert rate of each stage in
AIDA. However in reality e-bank marketing is pretty
pessimistic to attract the attention of college students,
partly because of the similarity treat in products designed
by each banks and the complex character in e-bank products,
partly because schools seldom encourage or say “no” to
the promotion inside the campus which prevented e-bank
products from being recognized and developing.
Figure 1. AIDA model.
Figure 2. Marketing model based on simple AIDA theory.

An Innovative Marketing Model Based on AIDA: - A Case from E-bank Campus-marketing by China Construction Bank 49
3. Market Characters in College
3.1. Internet Using Characters of College
Students
In USA, college students have been the leading user at the
early stage of almost every single information technology,
and also deep users of web technology[7]. Most students
are pry to use high speed internet (accounting about
90%), about 60% of the college students possess handy
tools surfing the internet by doing the activities such as
emails, text message, instant messenger (IM), social
networking service (SNS), Wiki, go on-line shopping or
playing on-line games etc. Internet technology greatly
influence or even change students’ life[8]. China shares
the same story, about 81% of the students have their own
PC, almost all could use internet either at dorm or public
site of the campus, about 70% of the students are very
often hang on the website[9]. In the population of
Chinese Internet users, about 30% are students, and
leading users are college students[4].
3.2. Difficulties of Finding a Job Faced by
Chinese College Students
It has been a hot topic that college students hardly find a
decent job in China when they graduated from schools,
and it becomes a serious social issue, and it is getting
worse recently because new graduates still flooded in
every year. It will be about 0.699 billion new graduates
in China in 2013, heat historical high, till April 25th,
2013 (about 1.5 months prior to graduation in June) less
than 30% of students have signed the labor contract with
employers in Beijing (Beijing ranked top three in terms
of economic scare and college quantity)[10]. Global
economy crisis and economy slow down in China help
accelerate the difficulties of finding jobs. On the other
hand, many companies could not hire the right fit to the
vacancies and failed to meet their recruiting target. Real
reasons are complicated. It is true that openings are lesser
due to globally bad economy, but we also found that
some of companies are not very happy with working
experiences, knowledge, competency, responsibility sense
and team work spirit (just name a few) in graduates
[12-14]. Some of the traits such as responsibility sense,
team work spirit are not main courses or none courses at
all taught in college curriculum in China. The weakness
is well aware in many schools today, however it is hard
to be solved due to a number of reasons, say weak
competency and inadequate communication skills with
companies & inadequate understanding to enterprises in
teaching faculties.
The curriculum taught in the class could not be in line
with the needs of reality, that is the issue, especially
today Internet development has upgraded so fast, Internet
knowledge and Internet utilization has already become
one of requested qualifications in some areas. Students
shall be taught the basic knowledge, and solve real
problems by using learnt knowledge.
3.3. Need of Curriculum Change at Colleg
In consider of current situation at college, the Ministry of
Education in China published a paper called “Sugges-
tions on Improving Teaching Qual ity at Higher Education”
in 2012 which requires the college focusing their curriculum
on training students to improve their creativeness,
collaborating with enterprises or industry associations to
better understand their needs of hiring graduates [11].
Response to this requirement, many colleges are working
on exploration new teaching method or model, and
working closely with enterprises.
On the other hand, college student are leading users in
Internet application in China, Internet using ability is
students’ major strength, so capability training based on
Internet technology targeted to college students will h elp
students improve their advantages in job market, which is
also the one of strongest voices and needs of curriculum
change for students.
4. Marketing Model Innovation
CCB working with China In ternet Association organized
the event called “ National College Student Internet
Business Innovated Application Contest”[15], this event
highlighted the Internet and Internet application in
business activities as one major and basic quality of
future jobs for students, among which the knowledge and
knowledge using ability of e-payment are the main and
typical one. The event asks student to give new solution
to business problems which was selected as real cases
from companies. CCB involved in the event by the
following means.
 Open series seminar at college, mainly focusing
on Internet development and the influence on enterprise
business, using existing examples at CCB bank to intro-
duce e-bank and the influence to e-bank, e-payment and
the security concern & development of e-payment etc.
 Design and organize contests, focusing on im-
provement of cognition and using level of e-bank at CCB
bank. The evaluation indicators could be the size of
crowd influenced, the number of new users emerged
regularly say weekly, monthly…, degr ee of using e-bank
etc.
 Online interaction, encouraging students to give
solutions to company’s problems associated with e-bank,
during the whole process, CCB bank will involve in the
activities with student by providing online help and off-
line communication.
 Online transmission, the event asks students ex-
press through Internet their experiences and ideas about

An Innovative Marketing Model Based on AIDA: - A Case from E-bank Campus-marketing by China Construction Bank
50
internet and CCB e-bank use, e-commerce use or problem
shooting solutions via internet tools alibaba.com, such
Sina blog, Tencent weibo, Baidu space, Ku6 video, ren-
ren. com, etc.., and encourage them to learn and commu-
nicated with each other online, by doing this, the e-bank of
CCB and mass cognition to e-bank also widely spread out.
Therefore, a new marketing model appears (Figure 3).
In this model, key elements have changed.
 Value proposition of marketing becomes “help-
ing practical-teaching innovation by collaboration be-
tween schools and enterprises” “Improving job compe-
tency” “getting to know the knowledge of e-banks” (dis-
played as value 2 in Figure 3(a)). It is the eager need of
colleges and college students. It gave the same weight on
each elements of AIDA successfully.
 Transmission becomes seminars, lectures and on-
line communications, but the main purpose and contents
remain unchanged. This reduced the cost greatly, how-
ever improved the effectiveness and clients experiences
positively.
Direct target of the marketing here is participant stu-
dents (displayed as students1 in Figure 3(a)), but the
people influenced by student behavior are more impor-
tant target groups (r eferred as other people and students2
in Figure 3(b)). Outcomes of the event, the students'
activities and works on the internet has been spread
widely throughout the Internet, which becomes new ads
or WOM (word-of-mouth) directly influencing other
people, other potential co lleges who have the same desire
for curriculum change and other people except students
(referred as students2 in Figure 3(b) and students who
did not participant). The event help users experience each
stage of AIDA (which was promoted by CCB bank such
as the display in Figure 3(a)), which unexpected bring in
a butterfly effect, say a small group of people lets larger
group of people participant in each stage of AIDA with-
out any resentment (which was done by participant stu-
dents such as display in Figure 3(b)).
5. Conclutions
Based on AIDA theory and student characteristic, value
proposition of e-bank market model beco mes help school
in curriculum change, which let CCB step up into a role
assisting students in career development, instead of
negative resentful role of being sales person. Without
using traditio nal marketing act ivities, this even t is realized
by fully using Internet technology and the Internet using
habit & character of college students, and the outcome is
good, efficient and widely spread. The outcome of this
event also could influence other specific groups of
people, as these specif ic groups may share same needs or
characteristics with college students. Based on this model
and hypothesis we could conclude that convert rate of
AIDA at each stage could be improved greatly in target
market, and it could cover even bigger potential market
by utilizing this model.
(a)
(b)
Figure 3. (a) Innovative marketing model at CCB at first AIDA process; (b) Innovative marketing model at CCB at subse-
quent AIDA process.

An Innovative Marketing Model Based on AIDA: - A Case from E-bank Campus-marketing by China Construction Bank 51
This model helps solve two issues of traditional
marketing.
 Enter the campus successfully.
 Less resentful of targeted customers to ads and
sales promotion, lesser cost, higher convert rate of AIDA.
The introduction of this model obtained big success.
According to our preliminary statistic, participant number
is getting bigger in three consecutive year events, about
200 thousands students involved, and about 150 thousands
became direct clients of e-bank at CCB. The people
influenced either college students or Internet users are
more than 30 million.
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