While most respondents own mobile phones, many owners use them for basic activities. More than one-quarter (28 percent) of respondents use their mobile phone only to make phone calls. Other popular uses for mobile or smartphones include text messaging, checking email and taking pictures.
Tweeting and checking social network sites were considered top phone applications infrequently, with just 2 percent and 5 percent, respectively, ranking them as a top-three application. Shooting or watching video was also low (8 percent ranked it as a top-three phone application), with the majority of respondents (44 percent) saying they don’t do it because they prefer to shoot or watch video on a computer (Figure 4). With handset design making it far easier now to do activities such as updating Facebook, one may assume that growth could increase substantially in phone use for such things as social networking and tweeting in the near future.
The importance of price, innovation and sustainability
Despite the global recession, 85 percent of global respondents spent money on consumer technologies in the past year—mostly on mobile or smartphones (49 percent), followed by computers (30 percent), high-definition TVs (23 percent) and digital photo cameras (22 percent). Spending in the past 12 months has been relatively evenly split between those spending under $500, those spending between $500 and $1,499 and those spending $1,500 or more (Figure 5). Looking forward, respondents’ spending plans in the post-recession environment roughly follow the same priorities and patterns as this year.
Yet while consumers are spending on technology, they remain keenly aware of the cost of the products. In fact, price is the most important factor in consumers’ purchase decisions, especially in the United States, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. Price is followed closely by personal research as a top decision- making factor overall. Both of these factors outweigh other criteria, such as recommendations of friends, consumer ratings or innovative technologies. (An exception is in China, where personal research, recommendations and consumer ratings are more influential in the purchase decision than price.) Marketing appears to have little influence on purchase behavior, as media coverage, advertisements, product packaging and manufacturers’ websites each were cited by 2 percent of consumers or less as a top decisionmaking factor (Figure 6).
Interestingly, though innovation was chosen as a top purchase decisionmaking factor by only 10 percent of the global survey respondents, 88 percent of consumers said it was very or somewhat important that the electronics brands they own are perceived as the most innovative technologies. Thus, innovation remains critical for consumer technology companies but may not justify a price premium in consumers’ minds.
On the other hand, a product’s “greenness” may command a higher price. Indeed, 67 percent of respondents said they would pay a premium for technology products that are marked as environmentally friendly. Given the importance of price as a purchase decision criteria, it is surprising that the environmental impact of a product can drive a premium price from many consumers.
Dissatisfaction and returns
Consumers tend to be more dissatisfied with technology services than the technologies themselves, yet both products and services experience very low return percentages among consumers participating in this research. Return rates for computers are triple that of most other devices but are still very low at 6 percent. Mobile phone return rates are double other products (4 percent), while all other devices have a return rate of 2 percent (high-definition TVs and digital photo cameras) or lower (1 percent for all other devices). “Drop and switch” rates for technology services are also low: between 11 percent and 12 percent for respondents’ most important services (home Internet and mobile phone). This could reflect the reality that in many markets, these services have greatly improved in recent years, thus enabling providers to hold on to a greater proportion of subscribers.
The majority of computers and mobile phones (about two-thirds) were returned because consumers felt they did not work properly. About onehalf of portable music players, digital photo cameras and game consoles were returned for this reason. For other devices, reasons for return were more evenly split among the device not working properly, the device not working as consumers thought it should, general dissatisfaction with the product or consumers finding something they liked better (Figure 7).