Survey: Net first choice for Asians in deciding electronics purchase

Juniper Foo | Feb 01, 2008

Here's one more reason to justify all those hours slogging over consumer tech reviews, so CNET Asia readers can make more informed buying decisions. This survey popped into our inbox recently, by market intelligence company Synovate, confirming what we already know. That Asians are turning to the Internet first to make purchase decisions for electronic products.

Here're some key findings on the "Why" and "How" of it, published from the Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions Consumer Electronics Survey.

The Internet is the most used source for researching consumer electronics information, with 86 percent of respondents saying they use it to look for consumer electronics information, far ahead of newspapers (37 percent) and by word of mouth (37 percent).
Over half (57 percent) of respondents said the Internet is their most important source of information, again much higher than word of mouth (10 percent) and brochures/catalog (7 percent).
Reasons for using the Internet include convenience, ease of comparison and depth of information available, besides helping to avoid sales pressure in stores and crowd.
On average, consumers plan to spend US$1,800 on consumer electronics in the next 12 months.

So what are they searching? Top of the heap turned out to be mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras--no surprise since we can see this happening online. Some useful stats: About 37 percent of those polled said they intend to buy a mobile phone, PDA or smart phone in the next 12 months. Another 27 percent will be looking for digital cameras/camcorders, with laptops at 26 percent, and LCD/plasma/flat TVs/HDTVs at 24 percent.

Interestingly, over half of those surfing the Internet for research indicated that they visit portals (55 percent) and manufacturer Web sites (57 percent), with portals being the most used sites in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. On the other hand, Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand preferred to reference manufacturer Web sites.

Fortunately for us at CNET Asia, we'll still have our jobs since product review Web sites ranked in third at 41 percent, with 39 percent of respondents saying they use IM to discuss products and 36 percent via email. Discussion groups and forums were more popular with those living in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The survey, appropriately held online via the MSN/Windows Live platform, was conducted across 10 cities in Asia Pacific--Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand—with nearly 10,000 MSN/Windows Live service users. This took place between August and October 2007.

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