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.