The New Paradigm of Digital Proximity for Cooperative Banks

Relations of proximity are a core issue to cooperative banks. This chapter demonstrates how and where these relations, presently developed on an individual basis between bank employees and clients, could evolve towards a new paradigm where the brand becomes a lever for enduring relations. Based on two qualitative studies, the research shows how digitalization can be a lever for competence capable of both generating and nourishing positive relations, and how brand activation, based on shared cooperative principles and specific values, can become the symbolic platform upon which enduring proximity can be constructed from the institutional point of view between both the client and the bank and the employee and the bank.