Most of the time new media agents look at the total population and divide it in two groups: the internet enabled population and 'the others'. The goal of the exercise we present here, was to take a closer look at the online population and examine whether this large group (64,7% of the Belgian population 12+) is a homogeneous group or whether we could divide it in segments based on their online activities and intensity. The exercise is a free demonstration of the SESAME Principal Component Analysis. We ran it on the CIM PMPA 2008 survey. We found 3 clusters of surfers:
Cluster 1 : Mainstream Surfer (66,5%)
Two thirds of the Belgian internet population are ‘Mainstream Surfers’. Their age profile is almost equal to the average of all internet users. Flemish speaking people are overrepresented in this Cluster. They also belong more than average to the social groups 1 to 4. They are very frequent surfers and they spend quiet some time surfing the internet. They are especially using the internet to find information. They are also the ones that read the most Press online. They are communicating most by e-mail. They download free Music and Software, but are still reluctant to pay for downloading content. Their online shopping is mostly limited to making online reservations for their holidays, cultural events and travel tickets. We can say that they have fully integrated the internet as a part of their daily lives.
Cluster 2: Savvy Surfers (7,2%)
This is the smallest and youngest group of surfers. They differentiate from the mainstream users by their big use of the more Web 2.0 oriented communication techniques. Social interaction is one of their main activities on the web. They are also much more into online shopping and downloading free and paid stuff.
Cluster 3: Silver Surfers (26,3%)
We have called them 'Sulver Surfers' because this is the ‘oldest’ cluster. They are infrequent internet users and they do not spend a lot of time on the net. Their use is also rather traditional. You could get the impression that they only turn to the internet when they need to. Internet is not yet fully integrated in their daily media scheme. To reach this group the traditional offline media are probably more effective.
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Posted on: 24/11/2008