June 19, 2013
Experian Marketing Services has released a new report [download page] on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) Americans, analyzing among other aspects their annual income and spending. The report shows that household discretionary spend among gay men trails their heterosexual counterparts ($15,100 vs. $17,400), and the same is the case with lesbian women ($15,000 vs. $16,000). However, on a per capita basis, discretionary spend is higher among gay men ($6,794) than heterosexual men ($6,041). Read more »
June 19, 2013
More than 9 in 10 college students claim to use their smartphone, tablet or computer at the same time as they're watching TV, including 49% who do so every day, according to a study from re:fuel. The study, which finds college students' Netflix use (63%) to be almost as prevalent as their pay-TV subscriptions (73%), indicates that multi-screening activities tend to be unrelated to TV content, much as with the general population. Read more »
June 18, 2013
Pay attention to "upscale Latinos," says Nielsen, calling them "the most influential segment since the baby boomers." In partnership with the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA), Nielsen has released some data concerning this demographic, which accounted for 29% of the Hispanic population last year but an outsized 37% of its total spending power. Defined as Hispanic households earning between $50k and $100k in annual income, these Latinos tend to be fairly young, with three-quarters of them under the age of 45. Read more »
June 17, 2013
After a big jump last year, discretionary spending by college students is expected to remain largely flat this year at $117 billion, per the latest College Explorer report from re:fuel. That remains significantly above discretionary spending power from 2009-2011, though, which stood at roughly $90 billion. Factoring in $287 billion in non-discretionary spending (on items such as room and board, tuition), the total college market's spending power is estimated to be $404 billion this year, down only slightly from last year's $409 billion. Read more »
June 14, 2013
A sizable majority of retailers believe that multi-channel customers are either significantly (47%) or slightly (29%) more profitable than single-channel customers, something consumers themselves appear to agree with. But a new RSR Research study [download page] finds that despite retailers' belief in the value of an omnichannel strategy, they continue to encounter significant difficulties along the way. Asked their top 3 organizational inhibitors to taking advantage of omnichannel opportunities, a leading 54% of respondents said they don't have a single view of the customer across channels. Read more »
June 13, 2013
"TV Everywhere" (TVE) services aren't yet being used much by consumers, and that may be the result of low deployment, which has yet to reach 50% of America's multichannel TV subscribers, according to recent study results from The Diffusion Group (TDG). Despite its growing pains, TVE could find a willing customer base: new data from EPIX suggests that the more screens subscribers watch content on, the more value they attach to their pay TV service. That's important for an industry that suffers from chronically low customer satisfaction ratings. Read more »
June 12, 2013
[Editor's Note: This is the latest quarterly update to this article, this time containing Q1 2013 data and trend analysis.] There's a strong perception that with the rise of social media, mobile device usage, and other such digital trends, youth have put TV on mute. According to the most recent cross-platform report [download page] from Nielsen, traditional TV consumption continues to drop off on a year-over-year basis among 18-24-year-olds, though the rate of decline slowed somewhat in Q1. Read more »
June 11, 2013
Few viewers are drawn to TV shows because they saw something about them on social media, finds the Council for Research Excellence (CRE) in a new study [pdf], and despite the buzz about social TV, daily interaction with social media concerning TV is still relegated to a small minority of consumers. But, the study finds there is significant room for growth: the proportion of study respondents who interact with TV-related content on social media on at least a weekly basis is triple those who do so on a daily basis (37% vs. 12%), and the data also shows that social plays a bigger role in drawing viewers to new than existing shows. Read more »
June 11, 2013
Total US spending related to Father's Day (Sunday, June 16, 2013) should reach almost $13.3 billion this year, per results from a National Retail Federation (NRF) and BIGinsight survey. That would mark a 4.5% rise from a projected $12.7 billion last year. While the percentage of adults planning to celebrate Father's Day is relatively flat, at 77.7%, the average celebrant will increase spending by a couple of dollars, to roughly $120. By comparison, Mother's Day spending was expected to reach about $20 billion this year, with the average celebrant shelling out $169. Read more »
June 10, 2013
3 in 5 consumers around the world would be interested in shopping at a fully automated "self service" store with vending machines and kiosk stations offering a virtual customer service, according to a new study from Cisco. With check-out often a pain point for in-store shoppers, the study finds that 52% of respondents prefer using self-check-out stations so as to avoid waiting in line to make purchases, with that figure rising to 57% among 18-29-year-olds and 55% among 30-49-year-olds. Read more »
