A few years ago, Ride Sharing systems were introduced in Bangladesh to make its transport ecosystem more agile and digital. In less than five years, it is now the living nexus of the entire country and more so, has given employment to thousands. So, what created such a boost? Today we will investigate the aspect through social media listening that the Ride services in Bangladesh use to promote their Brand presence. A little insight about us: We are Grey Data Science Dhaka. A multidisciplinary organization that measures and analyses the impact of brands and businesses’ online activities and communications, we are the pioneer in our field. With more than a century in the industry and backed up by the trust and respect of millions around the globe through our work, we are known to be Famously Effective. Now, a lot of the current Online Ride ecosystem in Bangladesh relates back to the point when Uber decided to penetrate the Bangladesh Market back in 2016. The graph below demonstrates the sheer interest the international transport giant has created in the country.
The spike in the above percentile graph helped everyone in the business to rise. Today, the social space for ride sharing systems in Bangladesh is nothing but a friendly competition of the brands to integrate into the culture of the country and gain people’s respect and trust. But it all comes down to them who are active on social media with an acute interest to engage with these types of brands and what keeps them coming.
The brief outlook on the Audience Profile should give some good insights as to what Brands like Uber and Pathao might perceive these days on social media as leads.
As the graph shows, the primary audience is the male gender in the 25-34 age segment. Youth represents the cultural core of any region and a good brand reputation among them ensures the brand’s survival in the unforeseen future. So how well the brands are successful in engaging with the audiences? Let us segregate the brands according to their performances in 3 categories to answer that: Low, Average and High Performing. How do we do that? We look at the conversion rate or the numbers of people those are conversing about Ride Sharing (through comments/shares) of an engaging population. This helps us understand which brands are retaining audiences more. Since Facebook is the most used platform in the region, It is considered for our study.
In the graph that represents the total followers and the conversion ratio, Uber is already at an advantage because of its huge follower foot-print drawn from global influence. Though Uber lags behind Pathao in its total engagement, its 0.66% conversion ratio is higher than Pathao. But is it the maximum the brand can go?
Most of the times, there are a lot of factors that are forcing both an existing happy customer as well as a potential lead to switch sides. What are the reasons? From incompetent drivers to insufficient technical support, our study finds out that every aspect plays a part in it. Brands are in a continuous struggle to target different segments of the audiences and curate relatable contents for them. A content that strikes a chord with the audience has proven time and again to have gone a long way in building a strong and long-lasting bonding with them.
The huge presence of Bangladesh Premier League in the Brand Posts (about 65% to be precise) are indicative of the same fact. Since we have already done our research on BPL earlier, we will limit our discussions pertaining to ride sharing industry. So basically, we will be concentrating on the rest 35%, which demonstrates the daily struggle among the user, driver and the brand in the ride sharing ecosystem in Bangladesh. A detailed thematic insight about the audience sentiment prevalent throughout different conversations pertaining to Ride Sharing has been demonstrated as follows –
Picking up the crucial points from the study, it can be seen that Driver Partnership programs are generating the maximum number of queries, including questions from concerned individuals about the documents required for being a driver partner; the salary they can expect and other vehicle-related queries. While Pathao gets the majority share in queries, Uber and Shohoz are close behind. However, as you take a closer look, you will observe that Pathao is dominant in almost all segments of conversations: both positive and negative.
This is somewhat synchronous with Pathao’s performance in the Followers vs Conversion Ratio study where you can see the sheer volume of engagement Pathao gets. However, the sentiment study shows a different face of the coin. With more engagement on social media, it’s highly possible that the compass gets shifted towards the negative sentiment. Similarly, Pathao is seen getting the largest share of conversations complaining about bad service; the sentiment is entirely reflecting in its Brand Image.
Incompetent Drivers (canceling trips without reason, bullying customers over digital payments, dropping on a wrong location, unmannerly, etc.) highly contributes to the overall negative sentiment towards the brand. This is automatically reflected in the audience perception of the Brand, where Pathao interestingly leads both the positive and negative race.
Brand Image (the most important attribute about a brand’s presence) is comprised of two factors in our study shown by the graph: Trust (94%) and Safety (6%). Trust ensures how much a user favors or trusts the brand and its services over those of its competitors. Safety infers how much he/she feels safe about getting a ride in that brand’s vehicle. Consider the ecosystem below:
However, we can’t ignore that Pathao stands tall when it comes to positive Brand Image. This comes as a conduct of good online reputation management and strategical placement of offers and discount related content.
Lastly, we look at how online mainstream media contributes to the entire buzz factor. Events and how they are perceived in the news media have a huge influence on the people. News set regional trends thereby harnessing the capability to make or break any brand every day. This is even relevant to ride sharing companies in Bangladesh. It’s important to maintain a good reputation on mainstream news as that is the source from which most brands solidify their brand presence both on and off the social media.
Below is a curated feed of the most engaged online articles related to the industry. Though Pathao leads the engagement race in social media (as seen earlier), we see most of the online mentions are coming for Uber. This is partly due to the incident of the vehicle theft back in January of a lady Uber driver and how Uber chose to aid her along with her daughters. Online mentions induce people to start user-generated conversations about the brand, which are referred to as earned conversations. And yes, it is remarked as ‘Earned’ for a very good reason!
