Int. J. Business Forecasting and Marketing Intelligence, Vol. 2, No.

2, 2016 117

Presence of banking in social media: Indian evidence

Pooja Malhotra*
Department of Commerce,
Dyal Singh College,
Karnal 132001, Haryana, India
Email: pkwatra@gmail.com

Balwinder Singh
Department of Commerce,
Guru Nanak Dev University,
Amritsar 143005, Punjab, India
Email: bksaini@gmail.com
*Corresponding author

Abstract: The paper presents the current status of use of social networking
sites particularly Facebook by the public and private sector banks in India. The
data for this study is based upon a survey of Facebook pages of 47 banks
explored during the period of February–March 2015. The paper is based on an
instrument called Facebook Assessment Index (FAI) developed by Miranda
et al. (2013), which uses three categories to evaluate the essential information
on a firm’s Facebook page: popularity, interactivity and content. The results
found that only 48.9% of the banks observed had their official Facebook page.
Amongst, the three measures of FAI, new private sector banks (ICICI Bank
and Axis Bank) performed well as compared to other banks. In general, the
banks were not fully harnessing the utility of Facebook and a great opportunity
exists for the banks for improvement in their usage of Facebook.

Keywords: banks; innovation; social media; social networking sites;

Facebook; financial services; India.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Malhotra, P. and Singh, B.

(2016) ‘Presence of banking in social media: Indian evidence’, Int. J. Business
Forecasting and Marketing Intelligence, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp.117–127.

Biographical notes: Pooja Malhotra is an Assistant Professor at Dyal Singh

College, Karnal, India. Her research areas are in the field of banking and
finance.

Balwinder Singh is an Associate Prof at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar,

India. He has research acumen for core financial issues and special interests in
the fields of banking and capital market.

This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Implications

of social networking sites for commercial banks in India’ presented at the
‘International Conference on Emerging Business Practices in Changing
Global Scenario’, Gaeddu College of Business Studies, Royal University of
Bhutan, 15 June 2015.

Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

118 P. Malhotra and B. Singh

1 Introduction

The growing popularity of social media, which include use of Social Networking Sites
(SNSs) like Facebook, Twitter etc., as a marketing and communication tool in the hands
of organisations is gaining remarkable attention. It has turned out to be the nucleus issue
of various studies all over the world. Social networking sites provide users with
opportunities to interact and share the information. SNSs help business houses to have
the ability to build corporate image by understanding and influencing the consumers
(Mangold and Faulds, 2009).
Social media can be defined as online applications, platforms and media which aim to
facilitate interactions, collaborations and the sharing of content (Palmer and Koenig-
Lewis, 2009). SNSs are considered the core of network resource for organisations that
link strategic value and business performance (Zhou et al., 2007). Social networks
provide means to allow the companies to interact with the customers by exchanging
information and receiving honest and frequent feedback about products or services
(Ferrer et al., 2012).
Presently, use of social network sites has increased tremendously worldwide. As per
latest estimates of eMarketer, the worldwide social network audience is nearing the 2
billion mark. More than 32% of people worldwide will use a social network regularly in
2016. In India, in 2017, it is estimated that there will be 197 million social network users
in India up from 86.7 million in 2013. This growing usage of social networking sites has
provided an opportunity to corporate world to utilise the value of social media as a
marketing tool and build and manage their corporate image. IBM expects that during
2015–2018, the number of companies that use social media to interact with customers
will more than triple (Chinapost.com, 2012) and banking companies are also not lagging
behind. Banks are utilising social networking sites to share information about their
products and services and interact with the customers by receiving and responding to
their complaints and suggestions. At the basic level, banks provide general information
about its product and services on their social networking sites and also responding to the
feedback provided by the customers. At a very advance level, the banks can utilise the
concept of s-commerce by providing access to their banking services through SNSs.
The power of social media will have a significant impact on the way financial
institutions work, thus, having a transformational impact on their marketing capabilities
too (Periasamy, 2011). Today’s customer is online, networked and better connected. Due
to this shift in customer behaviour, banks are forced to rethink their strategies and have
their presence on social media and leverage its benefits (Kalmadi et al., 2011; Suvarna
and Banerjee, 2014).
Indian banks also have their presence on social network sites like Facebook and
Twitter. However, some of the studies have revealed that only a handful of banks are
engaged in two-way conversations with customers (Financialbrand.com, 2013). A study
released by Unmetric, a social media benchmarking firm, HDFC Bank,
ICICI and Axis Bank performed well in terms of use of online channels, like,
Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. In The Financial Brand’s own study, ICICI ranks #3 and
Axis ranks #7 among all financial institutions worldwide (Financialbrand.com, 2013).
 Presence of banking in social media: Indian evidence 119

Facebook has emerged as the leading social networking site worldwide with 38.6%
global penetration and India has emerged as second largest user of Facebook with
108.9 million users of Facebook (Statista, 2016). Hence, in present study, Facebook has
been chosen to study the presence of banking in social media.

2 Literature review

Research in social media particularly, social network sites is still in its emerging stage
(Michaelidou et al., 2011). There exists a very few literature concerning social
networking sites and their impact on the organisational performance (Ferrer et al., 2012).
Treadaway and Smith (2012) showed the importance of effective utilisation of Facebook
as a marketing tool for business firms. Xiang and Gretzel (2010) showed the growing
importance of social media in the online tourism domain. Yao et al. (2009), Eisenfeld and
Fluss (2009), Harris and Rea (2009) and Nyambu (2013) have concluded that social
media helps in improving the performance of the organisation as it offered a platform for
marketing at a cheaper cost compared to other forms of marketing available. It also
enhances the competitiveness of the organisation.
Social media adoption by banks and financial institutions is still in a nascent stage. A
survey conducted by Harvard Business Review found that half of the financial
institutions surveyed were using social media while 25% planned to use it and still 22%
had no plans to use it in near future (Harvard Business Review, 2010). As the usage of
social media is growing, banks and financial institutions that are initiators and quick to
integrate their business operations with social media will be more responsive to
customers’ needs (Hazarika and Nag, 2014). However, mere presence of banks in social
media is not enough, they must be responsive and provide faster and effective customer
services along with an effective feedback mechanism.
Miranda et al. (2013) evaluated the use of Facebook by top 200 international banks
by developing an instrument called Facebook Assessment Index (FAI), comprising three
categories to evaluate the essential information on a firm’s Facebook page: popularity,
interactivity and content. The results showed large differences between the banks in the
three dimensions of FAI and a great opportunity of improvement in the use of Facebook
as a marketing tool.
As research on use of social network sites in banking sector is still lacking, hence, the
present study is an attempt to fill the literature gap. It aims to quantify the current state of
use of social network sites particularly Facebook by banks in India.
The rest of the paper is organised as follows: the next section of the study describes
the database and research methodology designed for the study. Section 4 depicts the
detailed results of the survey. Finally a number of conclusions and suggestions for further
research have been drawn.

3 Database and methodology

The objective of the present study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of Facebook

pages of the banks in India. To achieve this objective, an instrument called Facebook
Assessment Index (FAI) as adapted from Miranda et al. (2013) has been developed,
which uses three categories to evaluate the essential information on a firm’s Facebook
page: popularity, interactivity and content.
120 P. Malhotra and B. Singh

3.1 Categories for formation of Facebook assessment index

3.1.1 Popularity
The measure commonly used to evaluate the effectiveness of firms’ use of social
networks is the number of followers (or fans) of their pages (Michaelidou et al., 2011).
The second measure taken for popularity is No. of persons talking about the site.

3.1.2 Interactivity
Effectiveness of Facebook is measured by its interactivity with its current and potential
customers. It is related with degree of a users’ engagement with a brand and is usually
measured by the number of times the user comments, shares, or “likes” the information
shared by the brand (Miranda et al., 2013). To analyse the degree of interactivity of pages
following five indicators have been adopted:
 Number of wall posts made by the bank in the last 7 days.
 Average number of “likes” per post, calculated from the last 10 posts.
 Average number of comments per post, calculated from the last 10 posts.
 Average number of shared posts, calculated from the last 10 posts.
 Average number of user’s post answered by the company in less than 24 hours,
calculated from the last 10 posts that need an answer.

3.1.3 Content
The last measure of Facebook effectiveness is the quality of the page’s content. This is
measured by evaluating the presence of relevant information. As evaluating only the
presence/absence of certain information as an indicator of “quality” is probably may not
be the best alternative, but it is the solution proposed in the literature to avoid the use of
subjective factors (Miranda et al., 2013). In building the index of content value, 24 items
are analysed (see Table 1).
Table 1 Content items

Bank information Video

Product information Photos
Corporate identity Other Facebook pages
Marketing messages Claims and suggestions
Events Charity events
Polls Website
External links S-commerce application
Location Coupons or specific offers
Phone Gamification apps/contest
E-mail Downloads
Contact form Careers
Tools and Calculator ATM and Branch Locator
Source: Adapted from Miranda et al. (2013)
 Presence of banking in social media: Indian evidence 121

In order to measure the content score, one point has been given to the bank for a content
item of those shown in Table 1, if it was provided by the bank. Using this rule, a bank
can score a maximum of 24 points on this index and a minimum of zero. Total score has
been calculated for each of the banks by adding the total number of content items
provided by them. After calculating the total score of content value for each bank, the
content value for each bank has been calculated as follows:
Content value of a particular bank  {Total score of the bank/Total no. of content
items considered (i.e. 24 items)} * 100

However, it should be noted that the logic behind assigning points to the attributes does
not depend on the importance of the attribute nor on the quality of the information
provided by the bank. Rather, it provides a measure of the quantity of content items made
available through Facebook to the users.

3.2 Formation of Facebook Assessment Index

In the two categories (popularity and interactivity), the data is displayed on a scale of 0 to
100. To arrive at those values, each value is divided by the highest value and then
multiplied by 100. The score for each category is obtained as the arithmetic mean of the
scores of each of the items within it. The final index value is a weighted sum of the
scores obtained in each of these categories.
FAI = wx * Popularity Value + w2 * Interactivity Value + w3 * Content Value
The weights (wi) for each category are assigned on the basis of Miranda et al. (2013). The
assigned weights were: popularity 25%, interactivity 40%, and page content 35%.

3.3 Data collection

For the present study, Facebook pages of the 47 banks which include public and private
(domestic) banks as operating on 31st March 2014 are analysed (see Table 2). The
Facebook pages of the banks are analysed in the month of February–March 2015. Banks
with official Facebook page have been taken into account. Fan pages or Facebook pages
at local level were not included.

3.4 Limitations of the Study

1 The sample taken for the purpose of study comprises only commercial banks i.e.
public and private (domestic) sector banks operating in India.
2 To evaluate the use of Facebook, an instrument called Facebook Assessment Index
(FAI) has been adapted from Miranda et al. (2013).
3 All the information relating to Facebook assessment index, i.e. contents, popularity
and interactivity has been explored from the official Facebook pages of the banks
only. No other information source has been availed. Whatever the information was
available on the Facebook pages of the banks has been used for the purpose of
present study.
122 P. Malhotra and B. Singh

4 Results

Table 2 shows the results of banks having official Facebook page. It was found that only
48.9% of the sample banks are having an official Facebook page. Amongst them, private
sector banks (75%) particularly new private sector banks (100%) lead others. Only
29.6% of public sector banks are having official Facebook page. Hence, a large number
of banks are lagging behind in the use of Facebook.
Table 2 Banks with Facebook pages

Number of Number of banks with Percentage of banks

Bank
banks official Facebook page in category
Private Sector Banks 20 15 75.0
New1 7 7 100.0
Old2 13 8 61.5
Public Sector Banks 27 8 29.6
SBI Group3 6 4 66.7
4
Nationalised 21 4 19.0
All Banks 47 23 48.9
Source: Facebook pages of the individual banks (accessed during Feb–Mar, 2015),
statistical tables relating to banks available at RBI website.
Notes: 1 Includes banks established after the liberalisation reforms as recommended by
Narsimham Committee in 1991.
2
Includes banks established before the liberalisation reforms as recommended
by Narsimham Committee in 1991.
3
Includes State bank of India and its five subsidiaries.
4
Includes banks nationalised by the government in 1969 and 1980 and IDBI
Bank and Bhartiya Mahila Bank.
Table 3 presents the FAI scores obtained by the banks along with the three measures,
Popularity value, Interactivity value and Content value. Highest FAI value of 80.3% is
scored by ICICI bank, followed by Axis bank with 68.4. Only three banks (13%) are
having FAI value more than 50%. 5 banks (21.7%) are having scores between 30 and 50.
And remaining 65.3% of banks are not able to reach the score of 30. Amongst public
sector banks, SBI stands at 3rd place with 57.5% value of FAI.
The results also confirm the results of Financialbrand.com (2013), where ICICI and
Axis banks are in top 10 of financial institutions worldwide.
Amongst Popularity, number of followers ranges from 1249 (RBL Bank) to
3,480,517 (ICICI). Here again, ICICI Bank topped 96% of popularity value, followed by
Axis Bank with 93.85% score. If we consider only number of persons talking about the
bank, Axis Bank has topped with 129,664. Only 21.7% of banks are having popularity
score more than 40, making their Facebook pages as an important instrument as a
marketing strategy.
 Presence of banking in social media: Indian evidence 123

Table 3 Facebook Assessment Index (FAI)

Bank Content value Popularity value Interactivity value FAI

ICICI Bank 79.17 96.00 71.46 80.29
Axis bank 50.00 93.85 68.64 68.42
SBI 79.17 53.14 41.26 57.50
Yes bank 70.83 39.86 34.73 48.65
IDBI 75.00 46.48 13.41 43.23
HDFC 70.83 35.49 22.24 42.56
Kotak Mahindra 70.83 4.47 10.93 30.28
South Indian Bank 70.83 1.12 11.95 30.00
Central Bank of India 58.33 1.01 16.14 27.12
Bank of India 54.17 0.58 12.57 24.13
Federal Bank 54.17 6.27 5.61 22.77
SB Travancore 58.33 0.24 4.40 22.24
IndusInd Bank 50.00 3.39 8.33 21.68
State Bank of Hyderabad 41.67 0.48 14.88 20.65
ING Vysya Bank 50.00 5.19 4.07 20.43
DCB 50.00 0.07 2.89 18.67
Lakshmi Vilas 50.00 0.03 1.92 18.28
Dhanlaxmi 50.00 0.19 1.37 18.10
Tamilnad Mercantile 45.83 1.82 3.89 18.05
RBL Bank 37.50 0.10 9.25 16.85
J&K Bank 41.67 0.16 3.44 16.00
State Bank of Mysore 41.67 0.05 3.24 15.89
Indian Overseas Bank 37.5 0.08 2.45 14.12
Source: Survey of bank’s Facebook pages
The results of Interactivity value that again ICICI bank and SBI both are having highest
interactivity value 71.4, while Axis bank is having 68.6 value. All other banks have not
been able to even touch 50 points. Thus, a very low level of interactivity was shown by
banks. Table 3 also shows the results of content value. It shows that ICICI bank is having
highest content value of 79.17%, showing large number of information on their Facebook
page. 26% of banks are having less than 50% of content value. Hence, the utility of
Facebook pages still needs to be harnessed. Table 4 shows the item wise content analysis.
Total 24 items were included for content value analysis.
As shown in Table 4, all the banks’ Facebook pages had information about the bank’s
own website and information about the bank, marketing messages, photos and corporate
identity. Only one bank i.e. ICICI Bank from New Private Sector bank category, included
S-commerce application in its page which allows the users in online buying of products
and services directly from Facebook page. 78.2% of banks (100% of new private and
nationalised) pages included videos either directly or by providing links to YouTube.
124 P. Malhotra and B. Singh

Table 4 Content analysis (percentage of banks)

Public sector banks Private sector banks

All banks
Content item All Nationalised SBI group All New Old
(23)*
(8)* (4)* (4)* (15)* (7)* (8)*
Bank information 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Corporate identity 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Marketing messages 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Web site 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Photos 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Claims and
100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
suggestions
External links 95.65 100.00 100.00 100.00 93.33 100.00 87.50
Location 86.96 87.50 75.00 100.00 86.67 71.43 100.00
Phone 86.96 87.50 100.00 75.00 86.67 71.43 100.00
Product information 82.61 75.00 75.00 75.00 86.67 100.00 75.00
Video 78.26 87.50 100.00 75.00 73.33 100.00 50.00
Events 69.57 62.50 25.00 100.00 73.33 100.00 50.00
E-mail 60.87 62.50 50.00 75.00 60.00 57.14 62.50
Gramification
34.78 12.50 0.00 25.00 46.67 57.14 37.50
apps/contest
Other Facebook
26.09 25.00 25.00 25.00 26.67 42.86 12.50
pages
Coupons or specific
26.09 25.00 25.00 25.00 26.67 57.14 0.00
offers
Contact form 26.09 25.00 25.00 25.00 26.67 42.86 12.50
ATM and branch
26.09 37.50 50.00 25.00 20.00 28.57 12.50
locator
Charity events 8.70 0.00 0.00 0.00 13.33 28.57 0.00
Careers 8.70 0.00 0.00 0.00 13.33 28.57 0.00
Downloads 8.70 25.00 25.00 25.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
tools n calculator 8.70 25.00 50.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Polls 4.35 0.00 0.00 0.00 6.67 14.29 0.00
S-commerce
4.35 0.00 0.00 0.00 6.67 14.29 0.00
application
Source: Survey of bank’s Facebook pages
Note: * Number of banks with Facebook pages.

As per contact information is concerned, 86.9% of the pages (100% of SBI group and old
private) provided information on the location of the bank and telephone information and
60.87% have provided email id. Only 26% of the banks had contact forms to request
information, where new private banks (42.8%) lead again. Information on events was
included by 69.57% of the pages (100% of new private and SBI Group pages). Surveys
 Presence of banking in social media: Indian evidence 125

and opinion polls among their followers were included by only one bank (HDFC Bank in
New private banks category). In order to attract website visitors to Facebook page, banks
must provide some social incentives in the form of coupons or specific offers. However,
only 26% of the banks included specific offers for their visitors, where again new private
banks (57.14%) lead others. Not a single old private bank Facebook page offers the same.
About 34.7% of the banks included games and contests to attract new users, only 8.7%
offered the facility of downloading different content. Here, private sector banks lagged
behind. Using Facebook as a medium for recruitment and selection of staff i.e. careers
was employed by only new private sector banks pages (28.57%). Overall, although
public sector banks can establish an online presence on Facebook, they remain less likely
to compete with new private sector banks on the basis of the contents offered. In general,
banks have opportunity to make full utilisation of the Facebook pages for information
dissemination.

5 Discussion and conclusions

With the growing use of social media, it has become a need of the hour for the corporate
to use social media as marketing as well as a communication tool. Though, there has
been a good response from companies in the usage of social network sites, like,
Facebook and Twitter, however, banking industry is still at its infant stage in its adoption.
Some of the banks have their presence in Facebook due to competitive pressures. Mere
presence on Facebook cannot serve the purpose. They will truly have to meet the
expectations of consumers. Banks will have to adopt a well defined strategy to design
and use the social media to reap its real benefits.
Present study is an attempt to analyse the use and effectiveness of Facebook pages for
banks in India. It covered 47 banks which included public and private (domestic) banks.
The results found that only 48.9% of the banks had their official Facebook page. Out of
which, new private sector banks (100%) lead others. Only 29.6% of public sector banks
are having official Facebook page. Hence, a large number of banks are lagging behind in
the use of Facebook. Amongst, the three measures of FAI, new private sector banks
(ICICI and Axis bank) performed well as compared to other banks.
The present study is not only an attempt to provide current situation in the use of
Facebook for the Indian banking industry and do ranking of banks, but the results of this
study provides an opportunity to the bank marketers to make a comparison amongst the
competitors and make improvements in the indicators of FAI to attract more visitors to
their Facebook pages. Most important indicator is content, which must be designed as
such to attract current and potential consumers.
Facebook pages must include more and more new applications like, s-commerce,
webinars, webcasts, surveys and opinion polls, gramification apps, online games, videos,
e-newsletters, etc. to move from traditional media to web generation media. In general,
the banks were not fully harnessing the utility of Facebook and a great opportunity exists
for the banks for improvement in their usage of Facebook.
The present study fills the gap in literature relating to use of social networking sites in
banking industry, particularly in a developing economy like India. The findings of this
study are expected to be of great use to the regulators, commercial banks, other financial
institutions planning to exploit social network sites, bank customers and researchers. The
bankers as well as the society at large will come to know where the banks lag in terms of
126 P. Malhotra and B. Singh

exploiting the use of Facebook as a marketing tool. Also, this paper contributes to the
literature on diffusion of social media, particularly Social networking sites, in a
developing country, i.e. India.

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