An Investigation on the Use of GIS to Support Marketing in Uganda's Banking Sector. A case for Kampala District.

Abstract

Banking is a knowledge intensive business where record keeping, data management, process monitoring and business intelligence are really vital for the industry. This is because huge data is generated during daily financial activities within the bank, thus linking such data with space is the most efficient way to help banks interpret and analyze their customers’ data (Thompson, 2014). Alternate channel managers are normally burdened with going through several market profile pages when developing strategies to expand or enter into new markets. However, this burden can be mitigated through GIS capabilities of hotspot and site suitability analysis to aid channel managers to have a faster and better way of assessing business coverage and penetration as well as establishing location of potential customers and suitable territories for banking services. This research was carried out within the five divisions of Kampala district which is the Central Business District (CBD) for Uganda. The study aimed at investigating how bank branches are spatially distributed across Kampala and how GIS techniques can be utilized to efficiently and effectively locate potential bank customers as well as determining suitable sites for banking services. Spatial overlay analysis of bank branches and ATMs point data revealed that the spatial distribution of bank branches and ATMs across Kampala is clustered and randomly distributed without any spatial consideration. Reclassification and scoring of land use, road network and population data supported in locating potential hotspots for bank customers. In order to locate suitable sites, three datasets of Landuse, population and road network were spatially analyzed using the weighted spatial overlay tool of AHP in ArcGIS. Location spots of suitable sites in Nakawa, Rubaga and Kawempe divisions that had no or limited banking services where identified. This study concluded that GIS techniques are effective and efficient tools in establishing penetration of Bank branches and ATM networks as well as locating potential customers and new business territories that are not fully utilized. However, this is limited by the traditional strictness to customers’ data due to rigid data privacy policies and lack of GIS knowledge in the banking sector.