TORONTO – Newcomers to Canada use their mobile phone more than the general Canadian population, stream more content, and enjoy watching basketball, according to a new report released Tuesday.
Solution Research Group’s Newcomers to Canada research study explores consumer behaviours, social attitudes and demographics of newcomers in the last 10 years. The study polled 1,149 newcomers from China, South Asia, The Philippines, North Africa and the Middle East, as well as Latin and Central America.
According to the report, the newcomer market is increasing in importance socially and economically because of their record numbers (2.6 million since 2007) and habits that impact a range of industries including media, wireless and internet.
Newcomers to Canada are very mobile-centric, reportedly spending 2.5 hours with their mobile phone ‘yesterday’ compared to only 1.5 for the general Canadian population. Rogers is the leading communications provider to newcomers overall, with just over half (52%) saying that they have at least one Rogers product (wireless, TV, Internet or home phone).
Rogers’ Fido banner takes the top spot with a 21% share, and another 16% have a wireless phone from Rogers. Bell and Telus have a 14% and 11% share respectively, and Freedom rounds out the top five with a 10% share, followed by Koodo, Virgin and Chatr.
Newcomers are somewhat less likely than the general population to have a TV subscription, but even then, three-in-four (76%) have a conventional cable or an IPTV or satellite TV subscription from Bell, Rogers, Shaw or Telus or smaller providers.
The report says that newcomers overall are more likely to be monthly users of Netflix compared to the general population, with over half (57%) of newcomers reportedly using Netflix in the past month. YouTube use is also nearly universal with 93% of newcomers saying that they used the site for video in the last week.
Streaming music is also popular, with 51% saying they used a service like Spotify, Google Play Music, Apple Music or Soundcloud in the past month.
Newcomers also report blending media from ‘back home’ with Canadian media. Some 77% of newcomers interviewed visited a website aimed at their ethnic background in the last seven days, while 87% used websites aimed at the general Canadian population. As well, 87% watched at least some TV yesterday via traditional sources or the Internet, spending an average of 1.7 hours. CBC and CTV were the leading top-of-mind ‘most watched’ TV channels, followed by Global. News is important to newcomers, with CNN and CP24 (in Toronto) among the top five channels mentioned.
When it comes to watching on TV or following professional sports leagues on digital or social media platforms, NBA was ranked the first overall among newcomers. When asked to indicate their personal favourite sports, basketball comes out on top (29%), followed closely by soccer (28%) and hockey in the number three spot with 26% as one of their favourites. Cricket, swimming, football, tennis, gymnastics, badminton, and figure skating round out newcomers’ top 10 personal favourites.
Over half of newcomers reported reading or looking into print media yesterday and mentioned at least one title they read or looked into in the past week – the free dailies are very popular, with city editions of Metro in the top spot among newcomers in all the markets surveyed. 24 Hours is also popular, in the top three in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
A total of 1,149 interviews among newcomers aged 18 and older were conducted in June 2017. The interview form was presented in six languages to provide choice and minimize non-response error. In addition to interviews among newcomers, 966 interviews were also conducted among general population respondents aged 18 and older in the same six CMAs of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal in order to provide a general point of comparison for selected results.
