Windchimes wishes its readers a very exciting and adventurous 2009
There is absolute dearth of statistics on social media with respect to India or Indians. It is important to understand the prevalence of social media in our lives. There are studies indicating that close to 40 mn Indians are online. But really nothing beyond that!!
So what are these people doing online? How important is social media to them? How do they consumer social media? How is social media impacting the purchase behavior? How can marketers leverage social media platforms to reach out to their potential consumers. We carried out research to find out answers to these questions to help us understand and give an insight from an Indian context.
The research data that we are presenting is representative of 3 Indian cities; Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. While we have received responses from people from other cities but they weren’t statistically significant. The responses have been collated as whole and not individually of 3 cities.
Details of the respondents:
Total respondents – 105
Cities:
Mumbai – 40
Delhi – 40
Bangalore – 25
Gender:
Males – 60
Females – 45
Age groups
18-24 yrs group – 40
25-35 yrs group – 65
Objective of the research:
1.To understand the significance and role of Social Media in current scenario
2.To map out the current usage pattern of social media of Indians
3.To study the impact it has in our purchase behavior
Part 1: Significance of social media in current scenario:
Q1) If you had 30 minutes of time, which activity would you be most likely to do?
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Surfing Internet scored as the 2nd most medium to be used in spare time overtaking reading newspapers or listening to music. Even when the users have only 30 minutes, they would rather go online than put on their MP3 players or read a newspaper, clearly indicating that Internet / Social media is highly involvement and captures the imagination.
Q2) Which medium do you use when you want to get ””””news””””?
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Q3) Which medium do you use when you want information on new products or services?
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Q4) Which medium would you use to find out about latest trends?
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The replies to Q2, Q3 and Q4 clearly indicate the significance online medium has in our lives. Websites, Blogs, Social Networking Sites, Wikis etc clearly are becoming the places to look first – whether it is about new products or about new trends.
Companies and brands will need to have significant online presence to ensure that users find them when they are searching or researching online. Mere website presence won””””t be enough – but it will require presence in communities, discussion forums, blogs, networking sites etc.
The presence will have to be genuine, value adding and continuous. There is no end date to it. Also it has to be value adding for user to referring and recommend it to his friends. Companies will have to indulge in the social media marketing
Click here to go the second part of the study.
Comments
Tags: Indian social media landscape, nimesh shah, number, research, research tools, results, Sandhya Sadananda, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, statistics, surveys, Windchimes communication
Really interesting piece of information, Nimesh!
I believe Q3 says it all in terms of how Social Media is just getting ready for the future since of the people have started to rely on internet to consume information. So once Q1 is maxed up for internet, then surely we will see a positive trend in terms of companies realizing how online content creation is important!
Nonetheless thanks for such info.
—
Sampad
Excellent work, Nimesh. Looking forward to the 2nd part.
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@Sampad – You are right about the growing importance of social media in our lives
@Karthik – Thanks for comment. The second post is also in place
Hi Nimesh,
Worthy findings. It has made me excited about how to further use these findings at my workplace…
Cheers
Gaurava
Thanks Gaurava
Would love to see how you use these stats for your business. Do keep me posted
Honestly speaking, I am disappointed. The questions seem to be irrelevent. I thought this was on “Indian Social Media Landscape” but the questions asked are general. They in no way can help us get an idea of the social media landscape. for e.g.: Q3. Which medium do you use when you want information on new products or services? : Here your respondents may be thinking of “Google” while selecting the Internet option. Is Google a social networking site? I dont think so.
The option given to the respondent like “Websites, Blogs, Social Networking Sites, Wikis etc” is extremely vague. It just about covers everything online! If the study was to do with Internet users and how online is the next big thing, your figures make sense but if its on social media, guess we need to think again.
Q1 again has the option “surfing the internet randomly”!! Did you have question following if they selected this. for e.g. what on internet?
I am sorry if i am acting like a harsh critic but thought should let you know. I am just a new media enthusiast.
Hi Ashwin,
Thanks for your critique.
It appears from your comment that you haven’t read the part 2 of the research where the questions are linked to social media. As you would know in research, one has to warm up the respondents first on the category before getting specific to the topic.
Secondly, we had asked the question of which social media platform do they go to when they surf the Internet. Almost everyone voted on blogs, sns, Q&A sites etc so there was no cut available in data to present. That made us refrain from putting it up.
Also remember the biggest issue in research is as an interviewer, one wants to ask everything in one survey only and that’s wrong. You will only end up tiring the respondent.
Nimesh
Is there any qualitative research on how Indians are using social media with respect to their life purposes – e.g learning, decision making, expression, problem solution, etc.?
I would like to be involved in any research where we look at how social media can be used in stuff like “causes”; “economic solutions”; “learning solutions” ; “consumer activism”, etc.
Hi Anannya,
There is other quali data that we had asked for but we have kept that for our consumption as of now.
Would let you know whenever we are conducting research next
Dear Nimish,
Ofcourse I read the second part as well. I guess, no one would want to miss on reading the results of a survey on such an interesting topic.
Though i think it does impart some knowledge but didnt meet my expectations. I understand that a warming-up period is required and thats where the TV is leading; which i again may disagree (but i would not like to comment on that because i am unaware of the lifestyle, monthly household income and occupation of your respondents).
Though i highly appreciate your effort; i believe more time will have to be invested in producing and sound and robust survey; the results of which we could use in our practical, commercial and ‘advertising’ world.
Ashwin,
One can always have many more surveys – this would be good starting point to it. Then again, you have to be very clear with your objective bcos as I had mentioned, it’s easy to get tempted and carrie daway in wanting to know everything from respondents thru one survey.
We did it from our point of view and I am sure just as you have certain set of expectation, everybody wil have theirs and each will carry out their own research to met their own expectations!!!
Nimish, great start.
First, what strikes me is how popular television is in India (Q1 and Q2), compared to the rest of the world.
Second, though I cannot back it with numbers, I am curious what would suffer with the increasing popularity of Social Media — television or newspaper? In the US, its probably the (print) newspaper.
Pranam,
I would say that all traditional media would reinvent themselves to survive as all of them will get hit otherwise
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