This is a series of articles on the use of hybrid-data, and how publically available data can be used to yield advance business insight.
In this article, we examine the elusive brand-equity or good-will of banks by combining two data sources; asset under management and public awareness. Bank has a classic marketing problem; they offer highly regulated and highly homogenous product and must create a mental difference in the mind of their customers to compete outside of location-based advantages. Is the relationship between asset size and public consistent or are there irregular pattern that sheds light on the industry?
We combine two publically available data streams to visualize the marketing and performance of the Philippine banks. First, the publically available annual disclosure of each bank’s asset under management. Second, each bank’s social media presence in terms of exposure. (This data is extracted from QSearch Trend, our social data search engine.)
When we correlate the two data sources, a few interesting patterns emerge; There is a high correlation between a bank’s asset base and its public receptivity. For most parts, a bank’s assets under management highly predict its social influence. This could simply be because a large asset base and a larger venue allow for more media coverage, marketing, and branding budget, or large banks to correspond with a great number of locations and exposure. This establish the basis. For the industry norm, which is a context for understanding irregular patterns.
The immediate outlier is Maybank. The bank is in the top 10 in terms of influence and recognition, yet their asset base is in the second tier. This may be rooted in the fact that the bank is a foreign bank, and its entity in the Philippines is a subsidiary. However, the normal business logic would assume its marketing performance would be significantly lower than its asset base ranking is wrong. Somehow, the bank’s performance is far superior, indicating that its true performance might be under-valued. It would be interesting to combine share value into the existing analysis to look for investment opportunities.
Another interesting observation is that the top 10 banks’ ranking is fairly stable, whereas at the 11-20’s ranking fluctuates, while the bottom banks are also table. This may point to real competition among them id-size banks, which may hold a period of competition, die off, and possibly merger and acquisition.
Like our previous analysis of hybrid data, the more diverse sources of publically available data can answer business questions that regular Profit and Loss simply doesn’t help. In creating these analyzes, we are looking at a firm’s relative position within a continuous media scape through various frameworks and relative strengths. In this banking study, we are making an explicit connection between a firm’s asset base, an internal organizational resource, and its public recognition, an external resource. While P&L can talk about goodwill and branding, we look at the entire industry’s setup.
When data has sex, weird stuff happens. For a copy of the report, please mail roger@qsearch.cc