Atlanta is the cell phone leader
A study by New York-based Scarborough Research shows that Atlanta leads the nation in cell phone penetration. Three-quarters of households there subscribe to cellular phone service. Following closely behind are Detroit (74 percent); and Austin, Texas, Washington, D.C., and Miami (72 percent each). The U.S. markets with the lowest cell phone penetration are Charleston, W.Va. (47 percent), Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (52 percent), Buffalo, N.Y. (53 percent), Syracuse, N.Y. (54 percent) and Lexington, Ky. (55 percent).
The study also demonstrated that two-thirds (66 percent) of households nationally own cell phones and these consumers spend an average of $60 a month on their plans. Fourteen percent of consumers nationally plan to buy a cell phone for themselves or another member of their household in the next 12 months.
“Cell phone ownership is becoming ubiquitous; local markets that lagged in cell phone penetration experienced a significant amount of growth in the past three years. Nevertheless, the existing disparities in cell phone penetration from one local market to another underscore the fact that marketing cell phone products and services remains a local market issue,” says Bob Cohen, president, Scarborough Research. “Understanding consumers where they live - from their lifestyles and attitudes to retail behavior and local media usage - can help wireless services marketers foster enduring brand loyalty with customers.”
The Scarborough study found that 10 percent of cell phone subscribers nationally plan to switch their household cellular plan in the next 12 months. The top local market for switching is Detroit , where 18 percent of consumers said they will seek to change plans in the next year.
Cell phone subscribers are also well-wired at home, according to Scarborough . These consumers are 23 percent more likely than adults nationally to have a broadband Internet connection. Those who do not already have broadband are 20 percent more likely to plan to upgrade to it. Cell phone subscribers are 14 percent more likely to have digital cable, 12 percent more likely to subscribe to premium cable channels, and 8 percent more likely to have a satellite television subscription.
Cell phone ownership is defined as Scarborough survey respondents who said they or other members of their household subscribe to wireless/cellular phone service. The data for this report is drawn from Scarborough USA+ 2003 Release 1. The 2003 data on switching carriers is from Release 1 that represents six months of measurements. The other 2003 data represents 12 months. For more information visit www.scarborough.com.
Many have checked out self-checkout lanes
ACNielsen U.S., Schaumburg, Ill., reports that 61 percent of U.S. households have used self-checkout lanes, with 32 percent of those agreeing that “they are great.” Many more shoppers who have tried the do-it-yourself checkout lanes (52 percent) said “they are okay,” and 16 percent called them “frustrating.” The research comes from an ACNielsen Homescan consumer panel survey of 61,500 nationally representative U.S. households. Usage of self-checkout lanes is greatest among larger, higher income, younger, and more educated households.
“Self-checkout is still a relatively new phenomenon, so it’s good news for retailers that so many households have tried the new lanes. However, retailers who want to grow consumer acceptance, satisfaction and continued use of the do-it-yourself checkout lanes need to offer shoppers more help in getting comfortable with the process,” says Todd Hale, senior vice president, ACNielsen Consumer Insights.
As for the future, 70 percent of those who have tried self-checkout lanes plan to use them again. Just 25 percent of those who have never tried the lanes plan to do so in the future.
“For many shoppers, self-checkout is intimidating,” says Phil Lempert, NBC Today show food trends editor and a consultant to ACNielsen. “Retailers must be proactive in demonstrating the units and pointing out the time savings for shoppers. Unfortunately, if one does experience a problem - not having a price ring up correctly, for example, or having to wait for a customer service person to correct a malfunction - odds are they will never return to the self-checkout lane again. Consumers have zero tolerance for new technologies that don’t meet their needs”
The self-checkout lanes research was featured in the November issue of Facts, Figures & the Future, a monthly e-newsletter published by ACNielsen, the Food Marketing Institute, and Phil Lempert. To view the issue and obtain a free subscription visit www.factsfiguresfuture.com.
Vegetarian food market grows
According to Chicago-based Mintel’s research, Americans aged 18 to 24 years old are three times as likely than the general population to follow a vegetarian diet, with only 2 percent of the general population saying they don’t eat meat or seafood. Among respondents in the oldest age group (65 and older), while they had a low penetration of red meat eaters, they were significantly more likely to eat fish or seafood. This is likely a factor of the increased need to monitor cholesterol, fat and calorie intake, and a move to a lighter diet. In regards to the general population, 10 percent of Americans say they do not eat fish or seafood.
Vegetarians are much more likely to exercise than those who do not agree with the statement “I am a vegetarian.” Nearly 70 percent of vegetarians say that they “make sure to exercise regularly,” in comparison to 38 percent of those who are not vegetarians. In addition, vegetarians are almost twice as likely as all respondents to snack on healthy foods.
More than one-third of Americans consume some type of vegetarian food, with meatless meat products having the highest level of uptake among respondents. Prepared vegetarian meals were consumed by nearly one in five respondents, which could reflect the trend toward interest in convenient, healthy and easy-to-prepare meals.
The vegetarian food market in the U.S. has grown rapidly over the past five years, from $646.7 million in 1998 to $1.6 billion in 2003. Mintel predicts that the market will grow another 61 percent to reach $2.5 billion by 2008.
The market for vegetarian foods, fueled in part by the explosive growth of refrigerated daily alternatives such as soy milk, has evolved well beyond its incubator of health food stores. In the food subcategory of the vegetarian market, the segment to post the most significant growth is frozen meat substitutes, increasing nearly 18 percent in the two-year period, and which also commands 73 percent share of the vegetarian foods subcategory. Refrigerated dairy milk alternatives (primarily soy milk) showed the strongest growth of all vegetarian food and drink covered here from 2001 to 2003. This is likely at the expense of its shelf-stable counterpart, which posted a 3.3 percent loss compared to a 68 percent jump for the refrigerated segment of dairy milk alternatives. For more information visit www.mintel.com.
Buyers rely on ad inserts
Baltimore-based marketing firm Vertis has announced the results of its Customer Focus 2004: Ad Inserts study, which for the first time shows that advertising inserts are most likely to influence a consumer’s buying decisions and are the most popular form of media that shoppers turn to when looking for help with their purchasing decision.
“Ad inserts have been around for over 30 years and they’ve always been influential, but our new survey shows that consumers increasingly are being drawn to this medium,” says Thérèse Mulvey, vice president of marketing research at Vertis. “With less time on their hands and less money in their wallets, a growing number of shoppers are seeking out the best deals before they leave the house to go shopping. Now, more than ever, retailers and other marketers should consider including advertising inserts in their multi-channel marketing programs.”
Additional findings from the Vertis Customer Focus 2004: Ad Inserts study include:
- 85 percent of those surveyed confirmed that they use ad inserts in some form, up from 82 percent in 1998.
- 90 percent of women now read ad inserts, an increase of 4 percent from 1998.
- Consumers are most likely to use advertising inserts when they are deciding where to shop for clothing (56 percent), followed by groceries (52 percent) and home electronics (50 percent).
- When it comes to consumers’ buying decisions the most influential media are ad inserts (28 percent), TV (22 percent) and ads on the page of a newspaper (18 percent).
- The popularity of ad inserts has increased by 8 percent among men since 2002 (16 percent to 24 percent).
- 30 percent of those surveyed said that when they’re ready to make a purchase they turn to advertising inserts first, compared with ads on the page of a newspaper (18 percent) and TV (10 percent).
- Women aged 18-34 and 35-54, and men aged 35-55 and 55+ all made ad inserts their first choice.
- For the first time, more respondents said they read an insert in the past week than listened to morning drive radio (69 percent vs. 67 percent).
- Readership of ad inserts has increased from 61 percent in 2000 to 69 percent in 2004.
Customer Focus, commissioned by Vertis, is a biannual survey tracking consumer behavior across a wide variety of retail settings including automotive, grocery, department and discount stores, the Internet and specialty retailers. The survey was first conducted in 1998. In subsequent years, the study has been expanded and modified to identify emerging consumer behavior patterns and track shifts in consumer practices and motivations. For more information visit www.vertisinc.com.
Gordon Gecko still rules
Most people (57 percent of all adults) would like to see stronger regulation of Wall Street and only 7 percent would like to see looser regulation. Those responsible for regulating financial services receive a so-so, or moderate, rating, 43 percent positive, 43 percent negative. These are replies to two new questions asked in the annual Harris Poll about Wall Street. It is based on a nationwide telephone survey of 1,017 adults surveyed by Rochester, N.Y.-based Harris Interactive between October 14 and 19, 2003.
The trended questions show that there has been a modest improvement in the public’s perceptions of the people who work on Wall Street. They are still very negative but somewhat less so than 2002. By a substantial 68 percent to 16 percent majority, most Americans continue to feel that, on balance, Wall Street benefits the country rather than harms it, while they also hold many critical views about the people who work on Wall Street.
For example:
By 54 percent to 34 percent, a majority believes that people on Wall Street would be willing to break the law if they believed they could make a lot of money and get away with it. However, this is down from 61 percent who felt this way in 2002.
By 51 percent to 36 percent, they believe that Wall Street is dominated by greed and selfishness, but here again, this is an improvement from the 57 percent who felt that way in 2002.
Only a minority, 35 percent (unchanged from 2002) believe that in general people on Wall Street are as “honest and moral as other people.”
These results presumably reflect the good and bad news coming out of Wall Street recently, including continuing investigations of wrongdoing but also a big improvement in share prices. For more information visit www.harrisinteractive.com.
Companies are innovating more with less
The landscape of innovation in America is shifting. The peaks and valleys of revolution are giving way to the interconnected roadways and rivers of well-designed solutions, according to a study by San Francisco-based strategic consulting and research firm Cheskin and Fitch:Worldwide, an international brand and design firm.
The change is deliberate and well-funded, as corporations have increased their budgets for innovation, but learned to spend smarter. Rather than pushing their R&D lab to “just invent something new,” executives are casting a keen eye on meeting rapidly evolving customer needs. The most effective ones have refined their innovation process to be highly responsive to changing market conditions, widely collaborative throughout their organization, and focused on core competencies. Surprisingly, these very actions that might seem counter to inspiring the creative spark have the opposite effect. These are companies where innovation grows and thrives with less effort and greater rewards.
The study surveyed over 500 senior business executives across the U.S. in a range of industry sectors, asking them in-depth questions on their companies’ innovation practices, including specific approaches, level of authority and leadership, spending trends, success metrics and the influence of major industry trends. The 35-page report, Fast, Focused & Fertile: the Innovation Evolution, is available free online and can be downloaded from www.cheskin.com or www.fitchworldwide.com.
The study’s top findings include:
Rebellion is out, relating is in. Twenty-six percent of companies define innovation as “a solution” that identifies and addresses the unmet needs of consumers. Very few associated innovation with a more likely term such as “discovery” or “revolution.”
Tech companies out-innovate everyone. Microsoft was cited most frequently as one of today’s most innovative companies (137 mentions) in unaided open-ended responses, followed by Dell (47 mentions), Apple (40 mentions). The only non-tech companies to make it on the Top 10 list are Wal-Mart (38 mentions) and Daimler Chrysler (21 mentions).
Innovation budgets are not routinely being cut. In spite of the recession and sluggish economic recovery, over half (54 percent) of the executives surveyed indicated that their companies have increased investment in innovation over the past two years.
Creativity counts, but the customer is the judge. Bottom-line accountability is driving a practical and customer-focused approach where success is judged by sales (51 percent), revenue and customer satisfaction.
Some sectors seek to please, while others think first, then act. Retail, manufacturing and consumer goods industries put much of their emphasis on understanding the customer and a focus on quality; service industries felt more tied to strategy and planning, as did technology firms who also sought leadership.
Trends are crucial, but few know how to harness them. Sixty-five percent of companies committed to innovation monitor or track trends within their industries. However, while giving these trends a high level of importance, their role in the innovation process is ill-defined.
Tree-huggers are gaining ground. Sustainability - defined as meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs - tops the list (31 percent) of trends that companies are most focused on today.
The report contains results gathered from three phases of research including internal interviews and expert interviews with innovation leaders at companies including Coca-Cola, Maytag, Ford Motor Company and Meredith Corporation. The focus of the research was an online survey conducted in July 2003 with 544 executives with senior decision-making authority. Respondents were spread across the U.S. A full range of industries and company sizes was represented.