This is the second section of the research that we have carried out on social media with respect to India. Do read the first section.
Part 2 – To map out the current usage pattern of social media of Indians
Q5) How much time do you spend everyday on blogs, social networking and uploading photos and videos?
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It is really surprising to note that more than 1/3rd of the respondents spend more than 30 minutes everyday on social media sites.
Q6) What do you do when you are online?
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Distinctly, people have started engaging in active forms of engagement. From reading and commenting on blogs, to creating profiles, to uploading photos and videos – all signs of people moving away from passive to active forms of engagement. There is a need to involve them if brands want to retain their attention.
Q7) What do you write about in the communities and groups?
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When it came to participating in conversation and discussions online, majority preferred associating with a cause or cause led approach by a brand. Next in line were the celebrities or movies that people preferred commenting and talking about.
Part 3 – To study the impact it has in our purchase behaviour
Q8 Do the comments left on blogs and in communities influence your purchase decision?
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Q9) For which categories will you online reviews before doing actual purchase?
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The replies for Q8 and Q9 clearly highlight that people are more prone to reading reviews online before carrying out actual purchase. They would carry out the first leve of research – fact finding and opinion seeking – on social media platforms to narrow down their choice.
The categories most influences by this behaviour are:
1. Travel
2. Consumer Durables (I am including Cell Phones in this category too)
3. Automobiles – Both cars and bikes
To Summarize the survey:
1. Surfing Internet scored as the 2nd most medium to be used in spare time overtaking reading newspapers or listening to music.
2. Internet and social media sites are the first places to seek news, products and services related information and to find out about latest trends. In that sense, instead of being afraid of social media, marketers must embrace it.
3. Social media is becoming a part of daily lives. Even if it means just updating profile on social networking site or reading blogs. It is more involving and will eat into the time that was earlier being spent on other entertainment mediums. There are already youtube meet ups being organized where in group of people play their favourite online videos.
4. There is a distinct preference over getting associated with a cause when online. Possibly another reason why online activism is becoming so apparent in modern times. Besides that its entertainment and brands that take the next two slots. The important thing to notice is that if brands or companies adopt the role of thought leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) approach, then they are much more likely to succeed.
5. The most critical aspect of the survey is the impact of social media in our purchase behaviour. It is clearly evident that comments left on the blogs, review sites and discussion forums impact the manner of purchase. Lot of brands are make it in the consideration set of the consumers while others are dropped out on the basis of those reviews. It is important for brands to reach out to those users – be present where they are. They will have to build a dialogue with them in those forums and get them to review their product or service.
6. Another fallout for the companies is to track what people are talking about them. They will have to maintain their reputation online. It will be important to listen to what people have to say and act accordingly. That will start by first tracking the social media platforms and then analyzing the information to take strategic decisions.
The objective of this research was to give a peek inside the Indian users understanding and usage of social media. The role it plays in his life and how it will impact companies who want to reach out to them
You can download this research paper by clicking on to Scribd link given below
[scribd id=9690008 key=key-w7frnk7p3pzjlfjbxxv]
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Tags: data, Essentials, Facebook, India, Indian social media, nimesh shah, research, Sandhya Sadananda, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, startistics, survey, Twitter, windchimes communications, windchimes research
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Thanks for sharing this.
As you rightly mentioned that there is a serious lack of reserch data on social media usage in India.
I would love to see how these projections play out in Tier-2/3 cities. Again don’t have numbers but I would suspect future social media usage will come from small towns as the need to ‘connect’ is higher in smaller cities.
Once again thanks for sharing this.
It is encouraging to see research specific to India & pertaining to social media behavior. While the results from your research are encouraging, it has to be inferred in context to the methodology. It reflects behavior of 105 people who are probably already online ( I am assuming that survey was done online). It however doesnot indicate what % of total universe do these 105 people form. Also, in Q3 & Q4, we are inferring websites / Blogs / SNS put together as social media which may be misleading as (any) websites will be the biggest of the pie and it may not neccesarily be a part of social media
@Brij – Thanks. I agree with you on small town phenomenon. They will skip several steps in the technology revolution and directly start using the most current one.
@Rajendra:
The survey was done online.
The total no of people participating were 150 but we have collated and analyzed data of only those respondents from the 3 cities.
I would qualify independent review sites like mouthshut.com to be very much a part of social media. So, in Q3, 4 surprisingly, we had more people selecting social media as aplace for getting info on products or latest trens as they were considered ‘neutral’ or third party based and hence not company controlled.
Nimesh Shah
Nimesh,
It is indeed a corporate social responsibility to run the business efficiently and to spend stakeholders’ money productively. Response to Q8 and Q9 infer proactive SMM presence of companies in consumer–durables, travel, automobiles sectors.
You have succinctly forewarned that “Companies and brands will need to have significant online presence -to be genuine, value adding and continuous…..”
Appreciate your initiative.
Thanks.
Providing value is of utmost importance in any field
brilliant work. I just found out about your people through twitter, good for me :). You had rightly said
“The important thing to notice is that if brands or companies adopt the role of thought leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) approach, then they are much more likely to succeed. ”
but question is how many business leader really know about thought leadership?
Thanks for your kind words. Glad you found our research of use to you.
You are correct in stating that not many corporates are practising thought leadership but that’s a matter of time. Because this is socio-economic change, companies will be forced to adopt newer practices
Nimesh
Hi, Just wanted to add…
we run a fantasy game on couple of social networking sites… You will be surprised, at least we were… that the winners of these games were from places which I would have heard only in Hindi movies… Jumri Talaya. Most of people (we have about 50000 registered users) are from small towns. So its definitely not just the A class cities which is online
You are absolutely correct on that Sanjay. I too firmly believe that Indians from several Class 1 towns are firmly hooked on to several social media platforms!!
It would be interesting if you shared the statistics of your registered users with all of us on basis of towns, age groups and gender
Nimesh Shah
Thanks for sharing the research. Does the research truly represent the entire population? Are the respondents of a particular age group, social profile etc? I think this information may add more value to the findings.
BTW, snap ads are very irritating.
@MB – Thanks for commenting. The details of the respondents are given in the first post. They all beong to SEC A… If there is anything else that you would like to know which is not mentioned then do let me know
Nimesh Shah
Sorry to comment on this one so late. I just got to know about you guys through a mail on MICA group. Saw your website you guys seem to be going a good job..I am quite skeptical about this research…
You guys have based this entire research on 140 individuals only for 3 metros..40 respondents for a metro like Mumbai ! And if you are doing it on a small sample, then might as well get qualitative inferences..why waste effort in making pie charts out of it…what % of ppl do what really doesnt matter for such a small sample!
Secondly how are marketers going or even your clients going to use this data?
Viral,
Not sure if you are familiar with basics of statistics, so I will explain it here. Any sample size more than 30 is considered valid. There is obviously no upper limit to it. So, you might be skeptical about it but it’s not incorrect. It’s for you to decide how you would like to use it. It has not been done to keep your objective as a marketer but to give out a overall feel about the scenario!!
You may choose not to use it!!