Young Chinese Consumers goes Mobile [Survey]

According to a study from GroupM, the global leading media investment management group, and CMI which interviewed 1,650 students who fall onto the 17 and 21 year old category and living in tier1 and tier 2 cities in China, it revealed that young Chinese consumers who are living in the urban areas feel more optimistic when it comes to e-commerce and the evolving mobile web compared to those falling onto the older age groups. Based on the nature of the survey, the results are not representative nationally.

The survey found out that three in four of the university students polled had been going online for three years or more, with the segment having a typical spending level of 18% of their daily time on the web. On the other hand, among the city-dwellers overall, the proportion fell to a mere 13% of waking hours.

Lucy Zhang, futures director at GroupM Knowledge China, said: “The 90s’ generation lives and grow[s] up in the digital era. Understanding their digital behavior will not only show brands information like consumption habits or brand preferences, but [will] even give us a preview of digital trends. Their favorites today will be considered mainstream in the future.”

Social networking activities and chat sites were ranked highest among the respondents, and a majority of the response was social in nature with Weibos, the Chinese microblog similar to that of Twitter, hitting u as the most popular website.

Another point of differentiation between the age groups surveyed was the general sentiment when it came to online shopping sites where Taobao claimed to be the market leader in this category, according to the media agency.

In comparison to the 20% of all web users in China who ‘‘love’’ going online to do their shopping, findings from the report displayed that the younger consumers response rate stood at an impressive 52%. Further, being central to the students’ online lives was the mobile phone medium with 86% accessing internet on this device in contrast to 40% through desktop based PCs. 66% used the mobile web across all age categories, it added.

Data sourced from GroupM; additional content by MP Staff