Newsletter — March 2015
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS ON
SPENDING AND SAVING BEHAVIOR

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Dear Valued Clients,
Financial matter is one of the most crucial aspect of
people’s everyday lives that affect all sort of decision
making processes —something that will also affect
decision making and strategy formulation for many
business and organizations.
Many matrices and indexes had been invented and
heavily used to measure financial state of Indonesian
—mostly in quantitative terms. In this edition, we
would like to present to you another way to gather
information about people’s financial matter: through
their daily reflections and reports recorded in social
media.
Although this approach might have seemed to be less
noise-free than the other measurements, we believe
that social media data will provide insightful quality
for better understanding of Indonesians financial
matters, trend in the wishlist of many people, as well
as hidden motivations behind two simplest financial
activity: spending and saving.
We would also look into the general landscape of
banking industry; and also, into the advancement of
banking industry in the digital world.
We hope this edition will serve as an insightful
reading for you.
Best Regards,
Iwan Setyawan, CEO
WORDS FROM THE CEO
EDITORIAL TEAM
Board of Advisors
Iwan Setyawan, Roby Muhamad, PhD,
Shafiq Pontoh, Budhi Sumarso
Managing Editor
Smita Sjahputri
Smita.Sjahputri@provetic.com
Jl. Kerinci 1 no. 2, Kebayoran Baru
Jakarta Selatan 12120
T: +6221 72799613
F: +6221 72799613
www.provetic.com

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Money matter is incredibly crucial for many
people. Hence, it is only natural to expect that
people would also take it into social media to
talk about financial issues —from merely
expressing their feelings about their financial
state, conversing about their needs (and wants),
up to seeking information about banking and
investment products and services.
For us, this means access to yet another pool of
data that would provide insightful peek into
financial matter of Indonesian. In this edition of
Provetic Newsletter, we would look into several
aspects about people’s everyday financial matter
and break them down into several key points.
Saving and spending are two of the most basic
financial activities related to people’s daily
financial matters. These two behaviors also play
a very important role in understanding people
basic motives: what are the things people are
spending on as well as what are the things
people are saving money for. Understanding this
information would help business and
organization to capture the trend in people’s
consumption pattern to be able to anticipate
what people want and need.
Other than personal financial matters, we also
looked into the landscape of banking industry in
Indonesia; as social media conversation might be
utilized as benchmark to map out brand
awareness and people’s top association of
certain services.
Moreover, in the recent years, there has been a
trend towards establishing the market for Digital
Banking, starting with the more emphasis on
mobile and online banking transactions.
Although this shift is relatively early, but we
investigate the data to see how much it has
impacted the urban Indonesian financial habits.
Although this data on Digital Banking might be
rather limited, but this limitation alone might
help to highlight that there is indeed a very large
room to grow the market. Furthermore, we can
also identified how the market is understanding
this shift to online and mobile banking practices.
Lastly, we believe that these qualitative data can
be utilized as complementary data to give
deeper understanding about Indonesian
financial behavior landscape, anticipating trends
in people consumption, and identifying people’s
basic motivation in saving and investment.
INDONESIAN MONEY MATTERS:
SOCIAL MEDIA CAPTURES EVERYDAY FINANCIAL MATTERS

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Conversation about financial
matters could reflect the general
landscaped about consumer
behavior. In the objective to
attain this understanding,
Provetic analyzed the social
media conversation on people’s
financial matters and divided the
analyses into discussion of basic
financial activities, such as
saving, investing, and personal
financial crisis management.
People are more expressive
about financial crisis than
about savings or investment
strongly associated with the term
“Gajian" or payday; indicating the
most reported period of financial
crisis is on days before the payday.
Other than that, "Ngutang" or
lending money from other people
is also the most common term
used to indicate activity during
financial crisis.
Although the conversation about
financial crisis condition might
indicate hardship, but looking
deeper into the content of the
social media conversation, it
appears to be more of a light-
hearted conversation. Major topic
in the conversation is the
expression of optimism to survive
the cashless state of "tanggal tua"
or critical days before the pay day.
How people handle financial
constraints is also seen as measure
of characters, as several
conversation topics expressed that
people would rather have easy-
going and fun friends who won't
fuss so much when the money is
tight, over "cool" friends who
spend too much for style.
When comparing between the
conversation in which people
expressed financial crisis versus
conversation about saving and
investment, it appears that people
are more expressive about having
financial crisis than the latter
topics.
Although this finding might not be
unexpected because saving habits
might not be a conversation topic
that people are normally and
actively expressing on social
media, however this might also be
seen as an indicator that people
might be more sensitive towards
financial crisis and would be more
likely to comment publicly about
their financial crisis instead of
reporting their means of fixing the
situation.
In the conversation regarding
financial crisis, "Bokek" is the most
used terms to refer to condition of
being broke, or having no money.
This term appears to be very
Chart I — Total Buzz and Average Daily Distribution for
conversation on financial crisis, saving, and investment
Total Buzz Average Daily Distribution
N = 176,353 tweets

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People main motivation for
savings seems to be to buy
premium goods, own a house,
or going for Hajj trip
amount of tweets.
Three of the most mentioned items
of what people try to pursue by
saving money are mobile phone,
Hajj trip, and housing. Other
motivations for saving money are
getting married, buying books, and
financially supporting their kids.
When we compared this list of
items to the public general wish
list (things people reported that
they want at the moment), we
found several items that
overlapped in both lists, such as
owning a house, gadgets (SLR
camera, mobile phone), clothes,
starting a business, as well as going
on a vacation. This similarity
indicated that people are generally
more in line in what they want and
what they strive to have.
However, it also appears that what
people save up more is for things
that are of responsibility-driven,
such as owning a house, caring for
children, getting married, as well
as investment plan; while general
wish list indicates more of a
hedonistic-driven items such as
gadgets, clothes, and vacation.
In the conversation which people
talks about saving, mostly
consisted of the kind reminder to
"Rajin Menabung" or to diligently
save money whenever possible.
This indicated that the habit of
being frugal and saving money is
still one of the most important
values being taught in the society.
However, the conversation data
suggest that the intention to save
money is almost always being
accompanied with the expression
of having difficulty to continue
doing it; the latter, indicated by the
phrase “Susah Nabung” is also one
of the most mentioned topics,
following very closely behind the
"Rajin Menabung" reminder which
is the most mentioned topic.
Looking at the motivation behind
why people save, there's a very
strong indication that people save
money as a means to be able to
purchase something instead of an
act of investment —as the latter is
being recorded in a very small
Top Words for
Financial Conditions
Top Motivations
for Saving
Top Things on
People’s Wishlist

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being involved in online shopping
transactions.
In the landscape of Digital Banking,
BCA and Bank Mandiri are also two
of the most associated banks with
the practice of internet and mobile
banking in general.
However, general conversation
trend indicated that there is very
limited awareness that public have
regarding the practice of digital
banking.
Although some people, especially
in the urban areas, are already
more familiar with internet
banking and mobile banking,
However, it appears that most of
the conversation are driven by
customer servicing practices by
several bank official accounts to
answer people’s inquiries about
their online and mobile
transactions, instead of more in
organic and in-depth discussion of
the practice.
Based on the social media
conversation, data suggests that
BCA is the most prominent bank,
followed by BNI and Bank Mandiri
in the second and third place.
In terms of product association,
BCA is very highly associated with
product services that support
people’s daily transaction such as
“[money] Transfer”, “Payment” and
“ATM [transaction]”. BNI is more
associated with their “Credit”
services, and Bank Mandiri have
similar association with BCA, such
as “ATM (transaction)” and
“Payment”.
Other than that, BCA and Bank
Mandiri are also very much
associated with “online shop”
which indicates that these two
banks are the one most commonly
Chart II — Total Buzz for Banking industry
landscape in Indonesia.
Insights from general
conversation on banking
industry indicated that people
are still more comfortable with
conventional banking practices.
The newer shift into cashless
society is still very limited in its
influence on people’s financial
behavior; regardless the fact that
the urban Indonesian might
already be familiar with internet
and mobile banking practices.
BCA is the most popular bank
in social media, and is
especially associated with
everyday transaction.
N = 107,689 tweets

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In general, financial matters are
very important for most
Indonesian, as reflected in the
high number of conversation
level in social media.
Looking at the theme of what
people is most concerned about
in the conversation about their
financial condition, it appears
that people are more expressive
when it comes to voicing out
personal financial crisis rather
than reporting saving and
investment habits.
The most reported personal
financial crisis in social media is
about “bokek”, or not having
money, and having to lend some
from other people, or informally
known as “ngutang”. Meanwhile
the most reported event is
“tanggal tua” and “gajian”
indicating the importance of the
week before payday where
money usually is very tight.
Although this theme of
conversation might indicate
hardship, but it appears that
people are taking it rather light-
heartedly.
Although savings are relatively
under-reported in people daily
conversation, however, further
analysis is able to identify the
motivations that drive people
to save.
Data indicated that most people
save money to be able to
purchase something; however
most of the items mentioned
could be considered as long-
term investment such as
owning a house, providing for
their children, or getting
married. However, there are
also big amount of mentions
about premium goods as well as
tertiary needs.
These premium and tertiary
items are proven to be the most
sought-after things that people
converse about in social media.
In another conversational data,
which look into people’s
general wish list, most of the
items that appear in the
previous list also surfaced in
the general wish list.
The data helped to identify
people’s basic needs and
wishes, which would be
beneficial to be addressed by
businesses and organizations
aiming to help increasing
people’s wellbeing.
Focusing on banking industry,
BCA and Bank Mandiri are two
of the most popular bank,
especially in relation to basic
daily financial transaction such
as “transferring (money)” and
“(making) payment”.
The two banks are also the top
of mind brands when it comes
to online and mobile banking
transaction.
However, in general people’s
awareness of digital banking is
extremely limited —which
indicate that there’s a need of
greater push to establish the
move into digital banking and
cashless society.
KEY TAKEAWAYS AND
FURTHER IMPLICATIONS
© March 2015 — Provetic
Photo Credits:
Cover Photo by Tiltti
1. “Dirty Sexy Indonesian Money” by Ryan Tir
2. “Market” by Roberto TRM
All rights under Creative Commons Liscense