Which sectors are benefiting the most from social media!

According to Nielsen 85% of the world’s online population has used the internet to make a purchase - increasing the market for online shopping by 40% in the past two years (Source)

84% of internet users in Asia Pacific have made an online purchase as compared to 92% in North America and 93% in Europe. (Source)

 As per another Nielsen report on Internet users in India (Source)

• 26 % of online discussions mentioned brands
• 92% have read online product reviews in the last one year
• 77% visited the product website after reading the review on social media
• 58% of all social media users have made buying decisions by using online reviews as their main source of information

Now let us further magnify the trend in context with different sectors.

Retail: As per the report retail sector is the most benefited sector from online purchase sales. Books, Shoes, clothing and accessories are the most sought after products which are purchased online and the trend in Asia Pacific is in line with the global trends. In Asia Pacific Region 38% of the users in surveyed said that they have bought Clothing, Accessories or shoes on the Internet in the last three months as compared to 39 % in North America.

Travel and Hospitality: Travel and Hospitality is one sector which has the second highest degree of exposure on internet. Increasingly more and more people are planning their travel first on the internet and then on road. None of us can think of planning a vacation or business trip in absence of internet access. Indian Internet users have highest number of air tickets online, more than any other country in the world. 70% of the users surveyed said that they have bought airline tickets/reservations on the Internet in the last three months,

So all the above mentioned facts bring us to a conclusion that online purchase is becoming a reality with every passing year and trend is common across the globe.

The mind boggling number!

As per the 2009 data 5.12 people out of every hundred use internet in India. The total population of India in 2009 was 1,166,079,217 as per CIA fact book. So the total number of internet user comes to 0.0512 X 1,166,079,217 which equals to a whopping 59703256 Or 59.70 million users!!


Another report on FT (Source) says that India’s 1.1bn people currently take just 0.03 flights per person per year so that brings us to a whopping 34.98 million flight tickets!!


Now if we want to see how many of these tickets are booked online, let’s multiply this number by 0.70 as 70 % of people say that they booked flight tickets online in last three months (Source).


This brings us to a number which is mind boggling. As you can see from above calculation, approximately 24.48 million people book air tickets online.


And this is just one sector we are talking about, what if we combine all sectors!