Study Reveals Consumers Leave 'Real-World' Identity Behind, Take On 'Digital Persona' While Online

Consumers take on a 'digital persona' while online and shed their 'real-world' identity, reveals a new study.

Vice President of MasterCard's Global Insights group, Theodore Iacobuzio said that the study indicates that when consumers go online, factors like age, gender or nationality become secondary and they instead assume a sense of 'social citizenship', News24 reports.

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According to the report, five types of digital personas were identified in the study, namely Open Sharers, Simply Interactors, Solely Shoppers, Passive Users and Proactive Protectors.

Open sharers are 21 percent of online consumers and 60 percent of them are male, who tend to lead less risk-averse online activities and half of them are online more than ten times per day.

Simply Interactors include some of the most dedicated social networkers, yet they are not particularly tech-savvy consumers and out of these 63 percent still prefer to shop in the traditional way.

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Solely Shoppers rely on the internet for savvy shopping research and purchases and half of them use their mobile phone to price check in-store in order to get the best deals.

The Passive Users, who account for 20 percent of all online consumers, tend to spend the least amount of time online of all the personas and are not heavy online shoppers.

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While the Proactive Protectors, comprising 17 percent of all online consumers, are highly aware of targeted marketing and are unlikely to use social networks and are most guarded with their privacy settings of all the personas.

The study further revealed that 64 percent of consumers believe their personal data has value to merchants and advertisers, the report added.

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Source-ANI