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Accenture has been conducting in-depth research on usage patterns of various consumer technology products and services among US consumers—comparing results from 2008-09 to those in 2007-08.
More than 3,000 US adult consumers aged 18 and older representing all geographic regions were surveyed. The respondents were balanced across demographic factors including age and gender. The goal of the research was to determine if there had been any changes in usage between Baby Boomers + (45 and older) and Generation Y (18-24). The research uncovered several interesting trends:
Accenture’s research found that Boomers increased their uptake of popular consumer technology applications at an average of 50 percent last year, nearly 20 times faster than Generation Y. These findings reveal that even though Generation Y consumers are early adopters and primary users of these applications, uptake is decelerating compared with Boomers even for those applications that do not have significant usage.
Faster growth among Boomers is important because, on average, they have more disposable income to spend on consumer technology products and services than the younger generation. If more financially endowed Boomers continue to increase usage, it bodes well for the industry. These findings also suggest that Boomers are striving to remain intellectually and technologically literate, versatile and job-skill competitive.
But a comparison of the two survey periods shows their usage has levelled off—and even declined—with some notable exceptions. Besides social networking, Accenture’s research found that Generation Y’s use of many consumer technology applications was flat to declining. Perhaps not surprisingly, the same levelling off was seen among Generation Y’s use of many more mature consumer technology services, including Internet access, cable television and wireline voice. Two notable exceptions were a significant increase in Generation Y’s use of pay-per-view and video-on-demand and use of mobile data services.
The research also found that most consumers don’t use mobile handsets for multimedia connectivity services such as watching videos or streaming content. Fifty-four percent don’t need or want these capabilities; 14 percent said these additional services are still too expensive to use; and 9 percent said the cost of a mobile handset that can support those services is too expensive.
When participants were asked to what extent availability of mobile content drives them to upgrade their mobile plan, 70 percent said “to a very little extent.” The findings did however show a year-over-year increase in consumer adoption of mobile multimedia services. Watching video on a mobile device rose from 12 to 14 percent for all respondents.
The research also revealed a more dramatic uptake of Web-enabled phones, from 8 to 23 percent. One in three consumers said Web browsing is one of their top three mobile applications. And almost one in four indicated that listening to music on their mobile phone is a top-three application.
Far more consumers indicated this capability was more unimportant than important for several different consumer technology products. These include game consoles (51 percent indicated unimportant vs. 24 percent important), TVs (44 percent vs. 29 percent), mobile handsets (42 percent vs. 32 percent) and portable music players (42 percent vs. 32 percent).
However, the year-over-year trend data shows a slow but positive increase in acceptance of networked consumer electronics devices. For instance, consumers who consider the networking of TVs important rose from 25 to 29 percent. Similar increases surfaced for game consoles (from 21 to 24 percent), mobile handsets (from 27 to 32 percent) and portable music players (from 26 to 32 percent).
What this proves is that both generations, as discrete groups, have a clear and unambiguous preference for one technology over the other. This demographically diverse set of product preferences could be related to the fact that Boomers have been using computers for far longer than mobile handsets and are more comfortable using applications such as e-mail and browsing on the computer.
The rapidly growing network PC segment, featuring smaller, lower cost, and lower weight products such as net books, could be the answer for Boomers wanting to get a computer for basic applications they feel comfortable using. And the lower price fits the more limited economic resources of Generation Y.
A device that merges specific needs of Boomers and Generation Yers would be a small, portable mobile handset/computer hybrid with wireless connectivity.
There is, of course, an over-arching complication that plays into all of this: the economic downturn. Few things are certain about this downturn; however, to achieve high performance consumer technology companies need to invest aggressively because downturns historically have been when companies have made great strides towards becoming more competitive. These investments should include sharpening customer focus and enhancing customer service, driving operational excellence globally and acquiring key capabilities and assets.
Kumu Puri is a senior executive in the Accenture Communications, Media and Technology group and she leads the Accenture Consumer Technology industry segment.
March 11, 2009