Popularity of Islamic Banks in Saudi Arabia as Tracked by Google Trends

Abstract

“Google Trends” is a valuable tool that describes past changes in the interest of a given term and can predict the future. The aim of the current investigation was to examine the popularity of four full-fledged Islamic banks, namely AlBilad, Alinma, AlJazira, and AlRajhi, in the different regions of Saudi Arabia in the past 5 years (2015-2019) using “Google Trends”. Search volume data were obtained from “Google Trends” search engine. Performance indicators were obtained from banks’ annual reports. Multiple group comparisons were performed using ANOVA. Pearson's r was used for correlation analysis. The study findings showed that AlRajhi bank was the most popular bank in the examined period. The order of the popularity of the examined banks was AlRajhi > AlBilad > Alinma> AlJazira. Regional variations in the popularity of the four banks were also observed. In addition, an increase in the popularity with years was observed in the majority of the examined banks. Finally, strong correlations were found between mean search volumes and bank performance indicators such as total assets(r 2 =0.969, P=0.008), capital, number of branches(r 2 =0.988, P=0.005), number of employees(r 2 =0.982, P=0.009), and net income(r 2 =0.972, P=0.014). In conclusion, “Google Trends” is a valid tool that can be used to examine the popularity of banks in a given geographical region. The study provides feedback to studied banks to improve their performance in the very competitive environment.