As we saw social media becoming an important part of our lives, we decided to carry out the first ever social media survey in India. The research was carried out in three cities; Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore with the age group of 19-35 yrs old. 105 respondents participated in this online survey.

The objectives of the research were:

• To understand the significance and role of Social Media in current scenario
• To map out the current usage pattern of social media by Indians
• To study the impact it has in our purchase behavior

Our first question to respondents was that if they had 30 minutes of free time, which activity would they be most likely to do?

This data clearly interprets the importance of Internet (We had defined Internet as culmination of websites + social media sites) as it scores higher than reading newspaper or even listening to MP3 player!!

Our next three questions probed the respondents on which medium would they be most likely to use if they wanted to get news, information about new products or find out about latest trends? Internet has scored in the first place when it came to new products and trends and in second place when it came to news.

Our next section probed on how much time do you spend every day on these social sites? More than 1/3rd of the respondents spend more than 30 minutes of time every day, out of which 11% spend more than an hour.

We then wanted to understand what they did when they were online.

From creating profiles to uploading pictures and videos - distinctly, people have started preferring the more active form of activities. Merely watching TV does not guarantee stickiness. Brands will have to ensure that they get their users to participate with them otherwise risk losing them.

Our last section was to understand how this would impact the purchase behaviour of the users. So we asked them if the comments left on blogs and communities affected their purchase decision. A whopping 75% gave an affirmatively reply.

For sure the effect of social media would not equal to all categories so we asked our respondents to mention the categories whose reviews they would read online before carrying out the actual purchase.

The categories most influenced by social media were:

• Travel
• Consumer Durables (I am including Cell Phones in this category too)
• Automobiles - Both cars and bikes

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