Microsoft Advertising and MEC reveal the results of the regional "Pre-Family Man Study - What really drives single men wild online?"

Microsoft Advertising and MEC today released a study entitled “Pre-Family Man Study – What really drives Single Men Wild Online”, designed to better understand the online behavior of single men across Asia with a key focus on India. The study reveals that Job and Family are the two key aspects that dominate the lives of Single Men in India, with 36 percent prioritizing job or career ahead of everything else on the list of priorities which includes family (14 percent), money (13 percent), love (12 percent), and friends (6percent).

After marriage, priorities for the Indian men remain more or less the same with work being a more dominant force. Similarly, bachelors in Asia use an average of eleven email addresses, three smartphones, and various social channels to stay connected to their first loves: their jobs.

Spanning six markets in Asia – China, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Indonesia and Australia – the Pre-Family Man study interviewed 4,200 young male bachelors where more than 1,000 of them were from India between the ages of 21 to 39 to better understand their online behavior. The results show how men in Asia use many different devices daily to engage and support their digital activities online for work, socializing and entertainment. The study also reveals how pre-family men plan their time online and use digital content and technology to help them achieve their goals.

In addition to a strong purchasing power, the study proves that single men in Asia including India are digitally savvy with almost one out of five labeled as an innovator or early adopter of technology. Importantly for marketers, this segment is also becoming increasingly larger as the marital age of men in Asia continues to get delayed. The median age for first marriages of men in Asia rose to 32 in 2011.

“India has become a high potential market for advertisers especially with the rapidly changing dynamics of internet usage in the country. The pre-family man study provides marketers in India with tremendous insights into the online behavior of single Indian men which includes understanding pre-family men in India who access vast amounts of information online, which helps them make important decisions”, said Neville Taraporewalla, Country Director,Advertisingand Online, Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd.

Online Habits and Access Device

When it comes to online information, 80 percent of Indian bachelors felt that the information helps them make better decisions. Bachelors in India go online at least once a week for everything from news (95 percent), sports (87 percent) and gossip or entertainment news (67 percent). The need for the pre-family man to be ‘in the know’ is driven by his fear of being less respected and lacking a cutting edge. Given this, pre-family men tend to browse quickly through information potentially limiting their decisiveness, activity and creativity.

An interesting finding in the study shows that without technology, Pre-Family men anywhere in Asia feel naked as they use it to manage their daily lives. This is indicative of how planned their online behavior is, even down to what they use the Internet for, at different times of the day. The research also highlights that for social networking, Indian men love their big screens with 65 percent using laptops on the way to work as compared to 30 percent using smartphones, and 56 percent on the way back from work compared to 35 percent using smartphones. The top three motivations for social networking for pre-family men in India include staying connected (49 percent), to be entertained (21 percent) and as a habit (18 percent). Email is the leading online communications tool for men in India, as they use it to stay connected (28 percent), get things done (28 percent), and as a habit (24 percent).

Further, like their peers in rest of Asia, Pre-family men in India get competitive when it comes to games. Social networking or social connectivity provides them with the platform to not only play games but communicate their competitiveness among peers. They play free social or app games (40 percent) more frequently than games on portable (20 percent) or home (20 percent) console devices.

“Through the pre-family man study, we hope to help marketers’ breakthrough the barriers and engage with Pre-Family men in India on platforms that really matters to them. From providing assistance needed to make tough media choices to adding only relevant information pertaining to a specific need, the pre-family man study will provide brands and marketers, insightful and intelligent information to better understand their target audience, and how best to engage with them”, said Shubha George, Chief Operating Officer, MEC South Asia. For more information on the Microsoft Advertising and MEC Study “Pre-Family Man Study – What really drives Single Men Wild Online”, please visit http://advertising.microsoft.com/asia