Today, with approximately 13.7 crore internet users in the country, digital media has become a potential tool for consumer research before buying products and services offline. Moreover, consumers don’t only use this platform for search or social networking but also for utilitarian purposes. To understand the influence of internet on technology product purchases by buyers in-stores, Nielsen on behalf of Google India conducted a survey across 12 cities. The study interviewed 3,677 respondents outside 200 multi brand outlets and retail stores.
Google India’s Tech Shopper report claimed that over 40 per cent of the in-store purchasers in metros and Tier I and II cities use online research before making a decision and 69 per cent have already made up their minds about what model to buy and what not to before entering the store. For the record, the cities covered four metros, Chandigarh, Pune, Indore and Coimbatore for Tier I and Kanpur, Kochi, Vadodara and Bhubaneswar as part of Tier II cities. 86 per cent of the respondents included males across SEC A1 to SEC D and 92 per cent of the respondents were in the age group of 18 to 44 years out of which 34 per cent had already made the purchase.
Rajan Anandan, Managing Director and VP Sales Operations Google India
The noticeable fact is that the maximum number of online purchase related researchers are in Tier II cities, which stands at a staggering 83 percent compared to metros which is 30 per cent lesser. Is it because of the lack of resources, middling incomes or the search for value for money? Even though the offline behaviour of consumers is changing due to the research done on the internet but is the e-commerce segment also making an impact on the buying behaviour? Rajan Anandan, VP and Marketing Director, Sales and Operations, Google India, says that the objective of the research was to understand offline purchasing behaviour. “E-commerce will grow but over the next three to four years most Indian consumers will do research online and they will buy offline. What has changed is that they have already made up their mind before they enter the store. Additionally, 70 per cent of Indian consumers today have made up their mind about the brand and model they want to buy before they walk into the store,” he adds.
With Google being a platform used by brands for SEM (Search Engine Marketing), how do brands leverage this factor to their benefit applying to consumer research and behaviour? Anandan has a different take on this aspect, he says that the spends in the industry is growing at a rate of 50 per cent and by 2015 the spends on this platform will cross Rs. 5,000 crore. Though he says that SEM is a very important part of the media mix of the more advanced advertisers in India today, most active brands, however, have multi communication online strategies. “It is not one platform that a brand needs to be on, search, social, video and mobile all come into play. Therefore, the more active brands especially in the technology category are present across multiple platforms and have very comprehensive paid earned strategies,” he adds.
About e-commerce he says that the segment is growing rapidly. “Industry sources write $ six billion as e-commerce revenue last year growing at 50 per cent, which means it will be $ nine billion plus next year and by 2015 it will be north of $ 30 billion,” he adds. E-commerce is growing but of a very small base, he says and further adds that out of the $ six billion ecommerce last year, travel was $ five billion and non travel was about a billion and electronics and technology was about a third of that.
According to the survey, more than 90 per cent of the users are looking for prices; about 55 per cent look for photos of the product and a little more than 20 per cent look for reviews online. The study also focuses on the price aspect of different products which buyers undertake. This shows that the research intensity increases for high value products. For example the research intensity increased when the price range exceeded Rs. 7,000 for mobile phones and Rs. 30,000 for laptops among others.
| Medium of First Awareness | Metros | Tier 1 | Tier 2 |
| TV | 53% | 64% | 57% |
| Internet Ads | 23% | 17% | 12% |
| Newspaper Ads | 14% | 11% | 23% |
According to Google, tablets are the fastest growing technology products in the search query growth category, bagging a 160 per cent compared to mobiles at 41 per cent. The top five brands that consumers search for online in the mobile category in descending order that Google claims is, Samsung, Nokia, iPhone, Sony and HTC. In the laptop category Dell leads followed by HP, Samsung, Lenovo and Acer and in the tablet category Apple iPad, Akash, Samsung, Micromax and HCL form the most researched names. This calibration of brands was done by Google for the period of January 2012 to October 2012.
Google also claims that tech products are the largest category after search in India. The report shows that there is a 39 per cent year-on-year growth from the period of January 2010 to September 2012. But is online research enough for a buyer? And is 39 per cent a large number for buyers who do internet research before buying? Conceivably that is the reason why there is still apprehension among the Indian consumer to buy tech products directly online. As per the claims of the report, 69 per cent of the customers like to have the touch and feel of the product after their ‘extensive’ research.
Source:http://pitchonnet.com/blog/2012/11/21/40-indian-consumers-research-online-before-buying-offline/
