Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Those who do find their way onto the net face a number of restric-
tions in what they can publish. According to marketingvox.com (2007a),
Kazakhstan residents face both very high Internet access costs as well as
restrictions on their online publishing freedoms. The government often
slows down the loading speed of pages it finds offensive to discourage
visitors (marketingvox.com, 2007b). Censorship of the Internet recently
enforced by the government was also named by the respondents as a factor
having a negative impact on the ICT adoption and usage.
Kazakhstan's Ministry of Communications and Information has set a
goal to raise Internet speed to 16 Mbit per second in three years' time
(Tengrinews.kz, 2011b). Now 4G is available in some major Kazakhstan
cities. In 2011, it was reported that this particular format is available in 20
cities of Kazakhstan.
There are considerable differences in ICT adoption between big cities
and rural areas: major cities such as Almaty and Astana show high Internet
and PC adoption, but there is very slow PC/Internet adoption in rural areas.
According to the interviewees, consumers in rural areas do not have access
to PCs, nor are they connected to the Internet. Pronounced differences in
ICT adoption were also noted between different age groups. People in the
18-25 year age bracket were much more comfortable with the technology
than older generations. Interviewees pointed out that similar differences
exist between different social strata with higher incomes predicting an ear-
lier adoption of the technology. On the basis of the obtained data, an early
adopters profile was formulated: up to 25 years old, city dweller, above
average income bracket, white-collar or student. Early adaptors are also
PC owners, Internet adopters and mobile phone(s) owners. The Internet
for them is a mainstream medium mainly used for information search.
In our previous pilot research on the comparison of the Russian, Ukrai-
nian and Kazakh markets, considerable similarities in ICT adoption by the
younger generation (student or white-collar, 18-35 years old) were found
(Rubina and Garkavenko, 2009). Similar to the previous study, it was es-
tablished that this group of prospective consumers was characterized by a
positive attitude towards the Internet. They perceived themselves as very
confident ICT users who have no problem searching the Internet for infor-
mation. However, there were some strong reservations regarding buying
online. The privacy issues, security and difficulty of the shopping process
were found to be the main reasons for being wary about using the Internet
Search WWH ::
Custom Search