Who is a “Connected Consumer”?
October 3rd, 2007 by Garrick SchmittTags: Digital Consumer Behavior
I’ve had few people ask me about the term “connected consumer” and wanted to know the key characteristics of this group.
Here it goes:
When my design team set out to do the survey earlier this year the goal was to focus on mainstream Internet-user adoption of Web 2.0 functionality and interface conventions. I had hoped to find out whether the hallmarks of Web 2.0 (tag clouds, wikis, profiles, etc.) were either on their way to becoming hits or were just techno-hype. Not wanting to do a Pew-like study, we targeted the user group that most of our clients are actively pursuing — an engaged, broadband consumer.
Key characteristics of this “connected consumer” include:
- Access to broadband
- Spent $200 online in the past year (travel, netflix, tickets, amazon, gifts, etc.)
- Visited a “community site” (myspace, youtube, facebook, classmates, wikipedia, etc. — several of which are in the top 10 U.S.)
- Geographically, economically and demographically diverse
The respondents, who we recruited through a research firm and then surveyed online, track pretty closely to the 40-50% of the U.S. (depending on what report you read) that have broadband. My read is that broadband is the great online behavior transformer. It turns users from passive consumers into engaged participants. Thus we saw massive numbers around video consumption and interaction.
While certainly a more tech-savvy group than the broad U.S. population, “connected consumers” are not “early adopters”. They simply represent the engaged consumer that my clients (whether automotive, financial services, retail, entertainment, etc) are trying to reach every day.
4 Responses to “Who is a “Connected Consumer”?”
Okay, but I hope there was more specific data than that. Broadband is a discretionary spend, and at that, somewhat of a ‘luxury’ item, so it would be easy to assume that t he top 50% have it.
I’d like to define a ‘connected consumer’ as someone who meets at least 3 of the following:
1. Has purchased $100 worth online within the last 60 days
2. Has posted a review of a product (or movie)
3. Belongs to at least two social networks
4. Has _more_ than two email addresses (one work, one home, one for shopping/blogging, and the superhero identity)
5. owns more than one cell/pda
My guess is that this group is about 10-15% of the total population. These are not ‘early adopters’, but they’re close– more importantly, they form the opinion of the mass 50% that comes in after them. If I were spending my advertising dollars, I would want to target these 10% much more.
Interesting perspective. Our goal was to stay somewhat broad so we could see what a larger base of consumers was doing — still savvy and engaged, but broad nonetheless.