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Two Mobile Studies Provide Priceless Peek Into Consumers’ Psyche

Written on
July 7th 2008
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by Kathleen  |
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crystal-ball.jpgADOTAS – Two recent studies provide an interesting window into consumers’ wildly divergent approaches to their mobile phones and provide interactive marketers with fresh ammo for their campaign-planning arsenals.

A survey by research agency Ipsos MediaCT found that mobile users in the U.S. either live and die by text messaging or ignore it altogether. About 82% of users said they didn’t text at all, while 3% said they use it once a month of less. But that leaves 15% — a significant chunk of the mobile market – who use it every week and often daily.

Another study, from AKQA Mobile and dotMobi, found that consumers crave “practical mobile content” on their phones. Instead of games and ringtone options, the average consumer would use their phone for activities like banking, grocery shopping and travel planning. Almost 90% of the respondents said they’d be more likely to pick an airline with mobile check-in facilities over one that did not offer them.

Other findings of interest:
•    Approximately 90% of the 2,000 respondents in the online panel provided by Research Now are interested in learning about the mobile Web, demonstrating a need for brands to make their mobile properties findable via mobile search, marketing and advertising campaigns. Fifty percent of respondents were unaware that there are mobile sites optimized for use on mobile phones and the vast majority – 86% of participants – said they were interested in knowing which sites are easily accessible on a mobile phone.
•    Nearly 50% of respondents said that a poor experience on their initial use of the mobile Web made them “reluctant to access” either the site – or the Internet in general – on their mobile phones again.
•    Only 2% of participants in the survey who have purchased a phone in the past six months chose an iPhone. This indicates that brands that don’t optimize their mobile services for a variety of mobile phones will provide a substandard mobile Internet experiences for a vast majority of consumers.
•    Poor site display and layout remain top reasons for mobile Web dissatisfaction among consumers.
•    Almost two-thirds of participants stated that they would consider purchasing theater tickets, take-out food and travel tickets via a mobile phone.
•    A whopping 63% of survey respondents said they would be more likely to give up their money than their mobile “smart phone” if they were mugged.



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Reader Comments.

It is hard to believe that 82% of Americans don’t text message at all. I’ve seen figures as high as 60% do text message.

Posted by Bob Bentz | 1:24 pm on July 7, 2008.

The survey result that “50 percent of respondents were unaware that there are mobile sites optimized for use on mobile phones” raises an important question over what web address you should put on consumer facing promotions.

I agree that promoting a .mobi domain makes it crystal clear to the consumer that the site is optimized for mobile - something that’s essential to avoiding a bad mobile web experience for the user. But if over 50% of respondents don’t realize mobile-ready websites exist (according to the survey), is promoting a .mobi going to confuse them even more?

The question is with limited space on TV or print ads, would you promote both your .com address and your .mobi alongside other details such as a phone number for people to call? We are already starting to see a US/Europe divide with the US opting for the m.brandname.com convention and Europe going for brandname.mobi. More thoughts on this on the Bango blog - http://blog.bango.com/2008/06/11/is-promoting-a-mobi-confusing-to-consumers/

Sarah Keefe, VP Marketing at Bango

Posted by Sarah at Bango | 3:34 pm on July 7, 2008.

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