Until recently, Indian consumers’ buying decisions were totally dependent on either sales people or family members or friends who would give feedback based on their experience. It is no longer so. Now most consumers prefer online reviews where experts and also other consumers share their experience on the products.
In India, about 30 million people are using social media for sharing massages and information. According to the recent survey conducted by Nielsen company in collaboration with research and analytic company AbsolutData report, the Internet users who spend between an hour or three hours on personal e-mail checking are only 8%, but 20% of the users were found spending the same time on social media. The online survey was conducted on 2,000 people from all walks of life who are spread across top five metros and Tier 1 cities in India.
The above statistics indicates that most of the Internet users spend more time on social media for sending messages rather than logging into their personal mails. Some 82% of those surveyed use social media to send messages and around 67% (40 million) of Indians on the web, rely on online reviews to make purchases.
The survey also reported that, company and product information is what most consumers expect online. Consumers are using Internet as a platform to make purchasing decisions. Most of the users are sharing negative experience about the product than positive experience. So many of the brands are realizing it and making sure to nullify that by reaching out to them through a dedicated team.
As the population relying of online reviews to make purchases is increasing every day, many companies are now concentrating on building a good-will on the Internet, especially in the social networking sites, like Facebook. Some of the reputed companies like, LG India, have also set up an Online Reputation Management Team to deal with issues regarding online reviews of their products.