Segment: Digital Outsiders – Order-seeking Internet Laymen

Internet milieu: Order-seeking Internet Laymen (12%) – 8.2 million

To Order-seeking Internet Laymen, the World Wide Web is “uncharted territory”: They use it infrequently and very carefully. Because they worry about making a mistake, their approach to this medium consists largely of avoidance strategies – “playing it safe.” Their general attitude about the Internet is characterized by abstinence and vigilance.

As a result, they use the Internet defensively and formulate no specific demands because they generally (would like to) use basic functions. Given their lack of self-confidence in using the Internet, they are happy to receive help from others.

Order-seeking Internet Laymen are members of the conventional mainstream who have a strong desire for harmony and security in simple to mid-level social strata. In a comparison of types, they are the second-oldest segment.

As a rule, members of this group mistrust the Internet, particularly in terms of security and data protection. Even though these issues do not play much of a role in the offline world in which they live, headlines about cases of data misuse attract this group’s attention: They intensify the calls by Order-seeking Internet Laymen for a strong government that will significantly limit and control the “risks and side effects” of the Internet. Demands for strict legal regulation of the Internet are widely supported here because this group hopes that the virtual world that seems so overly complicated to them can be “reined in” through such regulations.

They prefer to delegate responsibility for a secure Internet to the government because it is viewed as a shield against all types of criminal assaults. As a result of their limited Internet skills, members of this group think the chances that an individual can protect himself or herself from misuse in the Internet are very low. Digital abstinence is and will remain the most secure form of self-protection.

Order-seeking Internet Laymen (12%) – 8.2 million

Attitude profile

Communication requirements and needs for action

  • Search for simple, reliable services, guaranteed by trusted institutions
  • Creation of legally binding rules of behavior
  • Awareness-raising efforts regarding the issue of security, particularly by personally known people who are well versed in the subject

                                       

* Self-evaluation on a scale of 1 = “beginner” to 6 = “expert”
** Agreement with the statement “personal data on the Internet is very secure/secure”