Singapore – In order to aid the influx of businesses that are now slowly opening up due to easing pandemic restrictions, data and artificial intelligence company ADA has launched a new dashboard that features data-driven insights on the changing consumer behavior in Southeast Asia and South Asia, widely disrupted by COVID-19.
Said index, called ‘The Recovery Index’, leverages ADA’s in-house data management platform, XACT, and was built with anonymized data sourced from millions of mobile devices and apps. While not a traditional economic indicator, businesses can use the dashboard to guide their decision-making by observing consumers’ mobility and digital consumption in near real-time.
Users of the dashboard, which is free to access, can drill down from the regional view to the national and state-level in eight countries, namely Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.
Some of the notable insights lifted off the index as of September 22 include countries in the Southeast Asian region, where for instance, the Philippines where footfall at malls and F&B outlets had recovered fully in June this year before declining to 70% of pre-COVID levels currently following a recent shift in lockdown policies in Manila.
In Indonesia’s case mobility has recovered more quickly in Java where Jakarta is located compared to surrounding islands. Footfall at F&B outlets has climbed to 110% of pre-COVID levels while footfall at malls has fully recovered. Usage of business and productivity apps, however, has collapsed to 60% of pre-COVID levels, even as usage of fitness apps has surged to 140%.
Lastly, in Malaysia, the main economic hub of Klang Valley is leading the recovery vis-a-vis other corridors in the Peninsula and the Bornean states. The recent easing of lockdown measures has seen footfall in malls jump to 130% of pre-COVID levels, even as road density and other mobility indicators are yet to fully recover.
For Srinivas Gattamneni, chief executive officer at ADA, part of the reason the dashboard was released was in response with the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused to business and to consumers, affecting them how they shop, where they go, and what they do on a daily basis.
“We created this dashboard as a resource for businesses to make sense of and respond to the ‘new normal’ in consumer behavior. The dashboard can serve as a guide to what has changed pre- and post-pandemic in terms of shopping, app usage, and mobility, allowing marketers to pivot their customer acquisition and retention strategies in an environment that continues to be volatile,” Gattamneni stated.
