Study: Chinese Consumers in Lower Tier Cities Watch Most TV Content Online

With market saturation in top tier cities, the Yangtze Study is a large-scale research to find out digital habits in China's lower tier cities and its implication for media planning.

In China’s lower tier cities, a growing population of netizens do not have a TV set at home and instead watch most of their TV content online, a study from Starcom reveals.

While TV continues to dominate in reach in the tier three to five cities, it is digital media that these consumers spend the most time engaged in.

According to Starcom, the average consumer spends 3.25 hours online, compared to 2.2 hours on TV and 0.5 hours on outdoor ads. Additionally, consumers in tier three cities clock an average of 3.57 hours per day ahead of their counterparts in the top tier cities at 3 hours.

In a phone interview with ClickZ Asia, Jeffrey Tan, Starcom MediaVest Group China’s national research and insights director, said these results have huge implications for marketers doing media planning.

In particular, they can’t rely on TV alone and should consider nationalizing their digital strategies.

Tan quoted one of the female respondents in the study that said, “My computer is my TV”, to indicate how this media habit is prevalent in the lower tier cities and skewed towards those between 15 to 29 years old.

The study also pointed out that online video entertainment is a popular way Chinese consumers digest content.

As the chart above shows, respondents spent an average of 1.76 hours daily watching video clips on computers across screens, followed by provincial satellite TV, and videos on mobile devices among lower tier cities.

Based on the research results, Tan advised marketers to “adopt a video-neutral, screens approach”.

When planning TV inventory, think of other formats. For instance, video could be impactful among Chinese consumers in the lower tiers, he added.

Although watching online videos is one of the activities lower tier consumers actively participate in, they spend the most time chatting on instant messaging services such as QQ and MSN on their mobile devices, followed by other online entertainment activities like gaming and listening to music.

Tan pointed out that these lower tier consumers are also quickly catching on to the social networking craze sweeping across the country, particularly among tier three cities.

He advised marketers to invest in social listening strategies because Chinese consumers in these geographic regions are still brand neutral, leaving plenty of room for brands to empower them with their brand messaging.

The Yangtze Study was conducted from March to May, across 27 provinces in China spanning more than 500 locations from megacities to tier five towns and villages with more than 13,500 consumers between the ages of 13 to 45 years old. Shanghai and Beijing are tier one cities; cities in Guangdong, Anhui, and Hebei provinces are among those in tiers three to five.

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