India: Rise In Brand Engagement Through Social Media

According to a study on social media usage by The Nielsen Company, 40 million Indians are using online reviews to inform purchase decisions – 67 percent of Indians who are on the web use online reviews to help them make purchases. A fourth of online Indians were able to recall brands using social media. Increasingly, Indians also want brands to communicate with them using social media. 60 percent Indians who are social media users are open to being approached by brands. This emerging behavior points to the fact that brands need to deliver on consumer expectations much more than ever before, in a world where consumer opinion and brand advocacy, or criticism propagates through social networks much faster than ever before.

While just 8 percent Indians spend between an hour and three hours on personal email, 20 percent spend the same time on social media sites. Nearly 30 million Indians who are online are members of social networking sites and about two-thirds of them spend time on these social networking sites daily. The study estimates that over the next six months 45,000 online Indians intend to join social networking sites each day.

India Remains Most Optimistic For Q1 2011

According to a global online consumer confidence survey by The Nielsen Company for Q1 2011, Indian consumers continue to remain the most optimistic globally, but their confidence levels have not risen from the last quarter of 2010 and remains at 131 index points. Saudi Arabia jumps up eight notches to come in at second place and Indonesia holds third spot. Seven out of the top 10 optimistic countries hailed from Asia Pacific, while European markets dominated nine out of the top 10 most pessimistic nations.
Top 10 Most Optimistic
1. India (131)
2. Saudi Arabia (118)
3. Indonesia (116)
4. Australia (110)
5. Philippines (110)
6. Switzerland (110)
7. Singapore (109)
8. UAE (108)
9. China (108)
10. Hong Kong (107)

Top 10 Most Pessimistic
1. Portugal (39)
2. Hungary (41)
3. Greece (45)
4. Romania (46)
5. Croatia (47)
6. South Korea (51)
7. Italy (57)
8. Latvia (57)
9. Ukraine (60)
10. France (61)

Business Travel: Expenses Reduced Through Online Adoption

GetThere Corporate Travel Benchmark Survey revealed that while business travel is increasing, corporations focus on reducing travel expenses. 61 % of respondents expect their travel budgets to increase up to 10% in 2011 and nearly a third expect their travel budgets to increase up to five percent. . Yet corporations continue to cut travel costs by achieving higher adoption rates of online travel booking tools.
Online adoption rates continue to rise in every region. As a result of higher online adoption rates, respondents reported the following savings:
- An average savings of 70 percent on agency fees
- An average savings of 18 percent and 24 percent on domestic and international airfares, respectively
- An average savings of 12 percent and 31 percent on domestic and international hotel rates, respectively.
- Average rental car rental savings were 4 percent domestically and 18 percent internationally