Competitor focused accounting: an analysis in the banking sector

Abstract

The dynamic conditions of the business environment, resulting from the advances that generate technological, economic and social changes, require companies to adopt more sophisticated management practices in order to obtain competitive advantage over their competitors. In that sense, Strategic Cost Management (SCM) contributes to accounting methods which focus on competitors to analyze costs from an external perspective. As such, the objective of this article is to identify the information resulting from the application of the main accounting methods with focus on the competitors in two Brazilian banks, using exclusively public information as data source. The methodology used for the development of the study is qualitative, descriptive and documentary. The documents available on the internet were collected regarding the financial statements, management report, integrated report, reference form, institutional and governmental websites from the period 2015 to 2017. From the use of categorical content analysis technique, information was extracted that enabled to identify, in both banks, the main cost drivers: the management model, the scale, the technology, the product diversity and services, and the institutional factors. It was also possible to identify elements demonstrating the market position and business trends projected by the analyzed companies.