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Follow UsA Google-initiated survey tried to dive into search pattern of Indian
users and came to conclusion that 84% users now use search engines as
their primary source to research for financial products. The survey,
done by
for Google
saw an increase of 17 percent in search engine for financial products
and solutions over previous year. Incidentally, this data comes at a
time when the overall economy is not in best of health.
The trend has also to do with the increasing trend amongst banks and
financial companies in India to become more Internet friendly. Most of
the websites of PSU banks as well as private banks have been revamped
and relevant information has been put on the site, something which was
not easily available on those sites. This has also been accompanied by
most of the banks promoting their online presence through offline
advertisements. It is, therefore, not completely surprising that
Indians are using search engines extensively for doing secondary
research on financial products offerings. In fact, the survey, talks
about the impact of such influences with television and print ads
(newspapers and brochures) being more successful in prompting search
engine use and eventual product purchases.
In fact, there is a lack of sufficient number of good quality financial
product comparison website which can provide high degree of information
to Indian users about various financial products and solutions. There
are a few exceptions though to this. For example, apnaloan has done a
fairly good job of trying to put together a financial products
comparison tool, but due to availability of complete set of information
from all financial and insurance institutions, it is difficult for
Internet users to make an informed decision.
Another trend that the survey found was the emergence of user generated
content (social networking, review sites, blogs) and videos as
relatively new source of information with about 40 percent of them
using to watch finance related videos. The video thing is not so
surprising as the quality of bandwidth availability to Indian users
have become better thanks to the better broadband service delivery by
both, government telecom service providers like
and BSNL
and also the private players led by Airtel, which has gone out
aggressively pursuing its broadband vision.
Not only fixed line Internet that has been growing at a satisfactory
pace, Indian mobile Internet user base has also been growing at almost
same pace. All research reports suggests, an estimated 50 million
Indian mobile uers are using mobile phones to access Internet.
The study included wide range of financial products – banking
services, home loans, personal loans, credit cards, investments,
insurance policies and remittances in the last six months.
Key
highlights of the research:
o
Eighty-four percent of those surveyed use search engines as either a
primary source or a gateway to other websites in the purchase-decision
process for
financial products
o Search
engines are valuable for all of the seven financial categories (home
loan, credit card, banking services, insurance, remittance, personal
loan and
investment). Over 7 in 10
purchasers in each category use search engines as either a primary
source or gateway to another source.
o Close to
7 in 10 purchasers compare costs during research
o Loan
purchasers do more research activities overall
o Over 9 in
10 purchasers use a combination of both online and traditional sources
to decide which financial product or service to buy
o Nine of
the top 15 sources overall are Internet-based
o More
financial purchasers use search engines and/or financial company sites
than leading traditional media sources
o Over 80
percent of financial purchasers use at least one online source at each
of three phases of the research process – for general
research, comparing
options and making a final
decision.
o Nearly 7
in 10 financial purchasers use at least one of the UGC sources like
blogs, social networking sites in their research.
o Online
videos are also an increasingly vital source. Over 4 in 10 watch online
videos on either dedicated video sites (like YouTube) or financial news
or
company sites.