But, my habit of categorizing once again comes into play in this post. Here I have tried to categorize most of the talks I have been part of while having guys’ outings. The good part of the post is that I have been in group of people from nerds to complete free-riders or my more desi friends. So here I go:

The nerds:

Yeah, certainly the name sounds as boring as are the talks. I mean exams are over and we have come to dinner but the ghost of exams is right there, poking its head out of the butter chicken placed in front. Everyone is criticizing on or other prof, one or other course. Some profs are good as long we don’t happen to sit for their exams. Others do not give proper notes. Some courses are total gas. Some subjects which do require lot of study, don’t have good textbooks (as if they were there, we would have studied). I mean these are just some topics that are part of these conversations.

The ‘Tharkis’

This is most widely publicized group, especially by the opposite sex. They think we don’t have any other useful work to do other than talking about them. But, yes they are correct. This type of conversation takes place in closer group of friends, where everyone is proud to talk about their lust. Yaar, juniors are so lucky to get so many hot girls, only our batch is most unlucky (remember grass is always green on other side). Then talking about each girls features, figure one by one as if doing female anatomy experiment. Then who has “chakkar” with whom, or who is seen with whom would be sufficient to make relation between two. These are just a few examples.

Cricket

Yeah, remember Cricket is our religion. This is an Ice-breaker topic. People who don’t know each other, or who don’t have something common to talk about, would easily go into conversation about cricket. We would discuss Indian tam’s form, their upcoming matches. Usual cribbing about how long it had been since we watched cricket. Then usual advice about who should be in team etc.

Bollywood

A more related topic, where we move from campus girls to good looking girls. Actually, here everyone tries to show case their love for movies whether Hindi or English. There would be saga about all time hits, big budget movie failures, which actress career is out, who is in? etc.

Politics

This is the other more common topic, I have usually found in my conversation with group. I think, men do talk about politics more because it is considered their domain of dominance. People coming from different parts of country would give view of politics in their particular part. Then, there will be discussion on national politics, about PM, parties etc.

All in all, Boys do talk but their conversation is healthier and constructive than the Girl talk.

If answer to all this questions is ‘Online’, then you fall in the community of Online Consumers.
But, this is the way I am just relating this blog with Consumer Behaviour. There is a large number of people who are spending more of their time online than offline.
So, the more intriguing question for a marketer would be, what do they do the most?
I am trying to classify their activities here acoording to my observations.
Simultaneously, a few assumptions I have made are:
1. The observations apply mostly to Indian netizens.
2. The sample space include young people aging from 16 to 30.
3. Though, majority of these are students, but bacheolor professionals also fall into   these behaviour.

Following are the activities I find people most engaged into online:
1. Social networking, be it on Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Hi5
These activities form bulk of the hours spent online. People from all age groups, economic class, education have found these networking sites an easy way too stay in touch with their buddies.
How often do we wish someone Happy birthday on Orkut is just an example.
But there are other motives too. I have found people exploring unknown profiles, reading other peoples’ scraps, finding good pics (if someone has shared with all) and to the extent that they send friend requests to unknown people. For single, this is a platform to look for single who are ready to mingle.

2. Use of messengers, Gtalk, Skype, YMessenger
There are people who would go online just to chat with with their friends and relatives saving the phone bills.
Chatting has become part of students’ life(especially in hostels) that we talk online with each other more than offline. One would even find people in two adjacent rooms chatting on Gtalk. The status message in Gtalk or Twitter is used to appraise the friends of one’s current status.
This behavior might give the phone companies run for their money in future. But, again here I find more people who go into chat rooms and chat with totally strange people. I once happened to go into chat room where two people from different nations talking about their project in a public chat room.

3. Internet as a source of information

This is the use, for which Internet was intended to be and Internet has fulfilled our need for information quit well. But again the anomaly I found in behavior is that we students use Internet less as source of information and more as a tool to complete our projects and assignments. Though we know, Internet is an excellent source of secondary research but what about the saying that ” MBA is just Cut-Copy-Paste” and the vast plagiarism. Though there are other activities like downloading music, softwares using mail for company or Institute communication, accessing government sites and checking information for restaurants, booking flights etc that we do online. But all these activities got utalitarian values and we do them out of compulsion, where as the activities I mentioned above are the ones we generally refer to ‘tp’ or “Timepass online”.

Coming to the point: When do you take medicines? This is the question I am going to explore in this post. There is a critical point or rather tipping point, after which each one of us would follow doctors or physician advice meticulously. This tipping point depends on the extent of pain and the seriousness of illness. But, it is before this tipping point that we see interesting behaviors regarding minor illness like cough, cold, fever, Headache, Stomach pain, minor injury and more like these.

According to my observations I could categorize them in following way. Once again my focus group is the student community, which has to take care of them, though this behavior can be extrapolated to larger group.

The prompt buyer or rather OverBuyer:

This class is very delicate. They would take their first pill, right after sneeze or cough. There is one friend of mine who has stocked medicines for every common infection. That’s why I call them over-buyer. Moreover this class gets very cautious near exams or important appointments\presentations. They would say that they do not want to take any risk. However there is very interesting theory from one of my friend that the use of allopathic drugs not only decrease chances of any major illness but sharpens their mind as well.

The tough man:

Ah, this class is my favorite. They are the tough men, who would rely on their immune system to ward off these minor (or chutki) illnesses. The typical sentence repeated by them is “I don’t take medicine as it would prevent natural or organic healing or building of my immune system”. This class fights maximum with the pain. Hence, their tipping point is also highest. Though it would require some psychological exploration to understand or find what amount of pain tips them off to buy medicines.

Ayurvedic man:

Then, I find people who are against allopathic drugs, at least initially. They would say that these drugs pollute their system by dissolving many artificial inorganic chemicals in their bodies. They would try different home made solutions (gharelu nuskhe) to fight with minor pain. One of my friends keeps “Gulaab Jal” to cure headaches and sharpen his mind. Some use ginger, Black Pepper (kali mirch), cardamom or clove. One can find similar practices in their daily food habits like having cardamom/ginger tea. No doubts, companies are launching many herbal products for these nature friendly, inorganic chemical conscious friends of mine.

Finally, which practice is the safest, or preferable is best left to marketer to take advantage of.