We live in a social world and it is interesting to know what activities are preferred online across varied age groups labeled as Young adults, Millennial and Gen X. To understand this more closely, an Indian online survey was conducted for a sample of over 16000. Various online activities of interest like Professional Networking, Download music, Emailing, Instant messaging/chatting, Online education/learning , Watch videos, Joined online community, Social networking, Share/upload pictures , E-greetings, Web info search(text, images), Train Ticketing, Bus Ticketing, Searched & bought online, Checked balance/transferred fund/made payments, Paid through net banking was covered . The survey aimed at understanding online preferences in age group labeled as Young Adults, Millennial and Gen X.
To carry out this analysis, Correspondence analysis, which is a popular data science technique that takes a large table and turns into a seemingly easy to read visualization, was used. It is a multivariate graphical technique designed to explore relationships among categorical variables. It identifies the main relationships between the rows and columns on a table and plots them on a two-dimensional map. It handles a categorical Independent variable with a categorical Dependent variable. It is an important tool to uncover relationship among categorical variables. Correspondence analysis is used to reduce the dimension of the data without losing the most important information. In other words, CA is used to graphically visualize row points and column points in a low dimensional space.
Data was converted to a contingency table of association, as below and used as input for the CA.
| (%) | Age Groups | ||
| Online activites | Young Adults | Millennial | Gen X |
| Professional Networking | 28.13 | 38.5 | 41.74 |
| Download music | 65.76 | 59.35 | 52.75 |
| Emailing | 89.32 | 91.17 | 89.83 |
| Instant messaging/chatting | 37.43 | 37.63 | 35.91 |
| Online education/learning | 27.91 | 26.37 | 26.59 |
| Watch videos | 67.53 | 64.12 | 58.26 |
| Joined online community | 34.11 | 38.58 | 38.88 |
| Social networking | 86.46 | 83.77 | 77.44 |
| Share/upload pictures | 32.08 | 31.15 | 27.44 |
| E-greetings | 32.98 | 41.41 | 43.43 |
| Web info search(text, images) | 90.57 | 89.42 | 86.23 |
| Train Ticketing | 50.16 | 62.61 | 56.04 |
| Bus Ticketing | 26.36 | 33.21 | 27.33 |
| Searched & bought online | 33.97 | 40.29 | 36.97 |
| Checked balance/transferred fund/made payments | 26.01 | 36.36 | 38.35 |
| Paid through net banking | 26.84 | 34.84 | 32.63 |
The report analyzes the online activities in India, providing key insights into how activities online have influenced the digital landscape and implications for marketers operating in this social world.
With the correspondence analysis map, we arrived at more apparent conclusions and it allowed us to quickly identify the associations, that Young Adults are by far the most likely group to use social network sites, Downloading music, Watch videos, Share / upload pictures. They are also good at chatting / instant messaging, web search and are keen on online learning / emailing. While, Millennial are more seen using online services for banking, ticketing. However, Gen X are newly joined online community members and wants to maintain professional network. This group actively exchange greeting online and use online for transferring of funds /checking balance. These findings imply that marketing research firms must focus on specific set of activities for different age label, while promoting their campaigns in order to make most profits for their organization
