Mobile Me and You-Exploratory Interviews Insights
In the framework of mobile reputation and collaborative consumption lesson of Panteion University, we tried to make a quality research that we called “Mobile Me and You”. The point of that research was to understand the relationship millennials have with their mobile phones. We asked some millennials questions such as how much they use their phones, which apps they use the most, how important their phone is for them, if they use them for online payments etc. We interviewed young people not only from Greece, but from different countries around the world (Chile, Brazil, Montenegro and Poland). As we didn’t have the ability to communicate in person with them, we conducted our interviews through online video calls. After those conversations, we reached the following conclusions.
The first thing we understood is that Instagram and WhatsApp are in two of the top trends for us as well as for our global friends. Young people also use Messenger and YouTube a lot, when it comes to social media, while in Greece Viber is still quite widespread. Moreover, it is important to notice that the usage of Facebook tends to decrease more and more during the last years.
Τransportation apps, such as Uber -internationally- and Beat -in Greece- are very popular, as well as the bus apps. Fitness and wellness are another category of applications that are considered a new consumer trend. Streaming has also become popular in our generation, since we noticed that the majority of young people has Spotify or Netflix installed on their mobile phones.
When it comes to online payments, millennials tend to avoid them and only use them if they have no other way. Many of them use online banking apps, but only a few buy things online. They consider it not safe and sometimes they find it more complicated than paying in cash. They all of agreed though that mobile payments are nowadays becoming inevitable. Moreover when it comes on sharing apps they use them but they don’t trust them a lot.
Another useful insight we received is the time that the generation of 00s spends on their mobile. At the end of our research we realized that millennials spend at least four hours a day using their mobile devices. It’s interesting to see what our Brazilian interviewee said: “If I forgot my mobile at home I will come back and pick it up” and “I feel that I won’t be able to communicate with my boss and my family without it”.
Sara, the girl from Montenegro, loves sharing content on Instagrame. She has many apps like Lightroom, Huji and Vsco to edit her photos and she is also really interested in other contents. She uses Instagram no only for personal but also for professional purposes because she promotes her mother’s hand-made jewellaries.
Marianna the polish girl on the other hand loves using apps that help her learn new languages. She has many dictionary apps for English and French and also the Google translate app. She has steaming apps like Netflix and she uses the Uber app whenever she needs a taxi.
As far as Snapchat is concerned, we noticed that it has already lost its popularity in most countries and that only a few people use it. Millennials believe that they can find the same content in other social media. A fact that surprised us while interviewing our Chilean friend is that, in his opinion, Snapchat is considered as an app that only the elite uses.
As a conclusion, we can say that the mobile phone is somehow an electronic edition of ourselves, our personal guide and help and we can’t dismiss it from our reality.
Kudos to our professor Mrs. Betty Tsakarestou for guiding me and my teammates, Konstantina Nikolopoulou and Athena Styllou, in this mobile reputations research!
Team: Konstantina Nikolopoulou, Athena Styllou, elena kouki,
Professor: Betty Tsakarestou.
