Brand Strategy Key Findings – Sept/Oct 2010
Sunday Activities
Most Americans (83%) say they look forward to Sundays. Some 61% share that it is the day when they take care of the things that are most important to them.
Food ranks high in Sunday activities:
- 91% have breakfast at home
- 89% cook or prepare a meal
- 85% have dinner as a family at home
- 69% eat out at restaurants
- 59% entertain guests at their homes
Other routines on this day include doing laundry (76%), working in the garden (56%), and tackling home improvement projects (53%).
Most Americans make shopping trips on Sundays, as detailed in the chart below.
Types of Stores Americans Shop on Sundays, 2010
Black Americans and Technology
The U.S.’s Black population rose 10% from 2000 to 2008, while their buying power jumped 55% to reach over $913 billion. About one-third (31%) is spent on technology such as computers, cell phones and other electronics.
Blacks spend an average of 18 hours online each week, compared to 15 hours watching TV. Most go online via a personal computer (93%) with 76% using their cell phone to access the Internet. Some 50% regularly update or access a social network account.
Consumers Shop Online, Buy In Store
Some 78% of Americans use multiple channels – computer, mobile device, catalog, in-store – to research and make purchases. Three in 10 (30%) say they use three or more channels during the process, while 48% use two channels and 22% use only one channel.
Internet users (61%) research products online at least once per week, while only 37% browse in stores each week. However, buyers are more likely to make their purchase in a store (65%) than online (14%)
Women and Shopping
The average American woman spends 25,185 hours shopping in her lifetime – the equivalent of eight years. She makes 301 shopping trips each year which takes approximately 400 hours to complete:
- 84 food shopping trips; 95 hours
- 57 book shopping trips; 31 hours
- 51 window shopping trips; 49 hours
- 30 clothes shopping trips; 101 hours
- 27 toiletries shopping trips; 18 hours
- 19 gift shopping trips; 36 hours
- 18 gift shopping trips; 30 hours
- 15 shoe shopping trips; 41 hours
Source: OnePoll.com
Preferred Media: TV vs. Internet
Some 42% of Americans say the Internet is the most essential medium in their lives. This is followed by television (37%), radio (14%) and newspapers (5%). The chart below shows the results of whether Americans would prefer to live without Internet or TV, if given the choice.
Americans’ Preference for Eliminating TV or Internet Service by Age, 2010
On-Line Radio
Of those who listen to the radio online at least monthly, more say they prefer Internet-only radio stations (55%) over online streams of AM/FM stations (40%). Internet radio’s appeal includes the listener being able to control the music being played (20%); have more music variety (17%); have fewer commercials (14%); ability to listen to audio they cannot get elsewhere (14%); and the ability to get a clearer signal than over-the-air radio (12%).
E-Commerce Via Cell Phones
Total e-commerce spending reached $210 billion in 2009, down 2% from the prior year. Some 56% more people visited retail websites from their cell phones at least monthly; another 48% accessed shopping guides. The number of people visiting online auction sites from their phones grew 33%.
Consumers Who Access Retail Websites from Their Mobile Phone, December 2009 (in millions)
Marketing Advice Sources
Consumers ages 18-34 say they weigh advice from a variety of sources before making a purchase decision. The chart below shows that traditional media are still more influential than online media for this demographic group.
Most Influential Advice Sources, 18-34-Year-Olds, 2009
Power of Welcome Messages
Welcome e-mails – automatically sent in response to an online subscription – are opened nearly four times as often as other promotional mailings and have a click rate of 14.4%, compared with the bulk mailing average of 2.7%. Overall, welcome e-mails have a transaction rate of 0.94%, compared with 0.1% for other mailings. Revenues per e-mail were also significantly higher.
Note that bulk welcomes, sent at a fixed interval (e.g., once a week) to all new subscribers, perform much worse than messages sent immediately upon subscription. The chart below shows the power of real-time welcomes, including those sent with an offer.
Revenue per E-mail for Real-Time vs. Bulk Welcome Mailings, April 2010
Branding Via Social Media
Research on social media users who follow brands online indicated that there are various triggers for someone to become a fan of a specific brand. For example, 75% of Facebook users who had “liked” a brand, say it was by invitation from the brand; 59% said the brand had been recommended by a friend; and 49% found the brand through their own personal research.
The reasons that former fans give for unsubscribing from a brand on Facebook was declining interest in the brand (32%), information offered on fan pages was posted too often (27%), information posted was not interesting (22%), information was published by the brand that the subscriber didn’t like (12%), and information was not posted often enough (7%).
Bullets
- Women own an average of 19 pairs of underwear; men own 16 pairs.
- More than four in 10 consumers (41%) are now using in-store or mall kiosks such as Redboxes to rent movies on DVD, compared to the 36% who rent from Blockbuster outlets and other physical stores.
- Behind English, Spanish is the most common language in the U.S. Some 34.5 million Americans speak Spanish at home; Chinese is spoken by 2.5 million.
- Some 78% of teens say that text messaging is an important part of their daily life. The number of teens who text on a regular basis increased 50% from 2007 to 2009.