Mobile me and you- fitness&nutrition people (the final steps)- part 6
This semester we had the chance to work for a very interesting project during the course ‘’New Consumer Trends’’, taught by Mrs. Betty Tsakarestou. Our team did an extended research on Mobile Collaborative Consumption and Sharing Economy, a field that is on the rise. During our research we wanted to go deeper into the mobile consumption and the way, especially Millennials, use their phone for their everyday routine. The insights and the observations that arise are interesting and tell us a lot about our generation and the world around us. So keep on reading our stories in order to follow our project steps and discover our final findings.
The final steps of that project was really anticipated from everyone in the team, as we acted like real professionals doing our jobs! So, we conducted a qualitative survey, in order to get a closer look at customer behavior of Millennial generation. Our team interviewed 10 people for that reason and the conclusions of that survey are quite enough interesting.
Without hesitation, we can say that each and every one person we interviewed was not at all alike to the other. And, if you are wondering, if this is something we want, then yes, it is, because the key point of the survey is to see from really close, what kind of use people do and, actually, the relationship between people and their mobile phones. For example, some of them are the called ones “heavy users”, with 7 plus hours on the mobile, while others, the “light users” use their phones in an average of 3 hours.
(Some screenshots from the interviews)
As concerns in the survey, the procedure we followed was quite simple. All the teams of the “Mobile Reputations Collaborative Consumption in Sharing Economy” had dealt 10 major and common questions. That means, that each and every one team was to ask the same initial questions. The rest of the questions would be different for every team, due to the different categories of focus groups, we chose.
Our team, Marina Karvouni, Elena Tsakiridou, Vasia Tagkatidi and Flaouna Georgia, chose the category of “Fitness and Wellness” and we don’t regret it. The conversations with the participants, their answers, the engagement was absolutely unexpected and fun!
Bellow you will find the conclusions of our survey.
First of all, a topic, that seems to separate the questioned persons, is the “self branding” character of Instagram and in general Social media. Some of them believe that Social media is, indeed, a powerful tool of self branding that depicts their character and way of life, while others believe that their accounts don’t present their real selves 100%. Also, most of them are sure that their managers look at their profiles on Social media. Of course, they say, social media can’t replace the traditional CV, but companies and managers need social media in order to get to know better their candidates, their character and their way of life. This information is extremely important, because candidates need to fit in the company’s culture.
They don’t swipe up. Although they think it is convenient, Millenials don’t like to swipe up. As they told us, they find this tool quite annoying, because they know it is sponsored. Most of the persons we asked, are not spontaneous buyers, on the contrary, they want to be sure about what they are buying. This doesn’t mean they don’t shop online. They do, but they try to be cautious about the site and the quality of the products they buy. They, also, use Internet so as to do a research for the products they are interested to and then they prefer the traditional way of shopping. 10 over 10 have already experienced an online shopping and 5 over 10 have experienced sharing economy services and those who haven’t, they just haven’t yet.
Each and every one of the persons we asked agrees with the theory that Millenials like and share the same content with their friends and that’s because they have the same habits and interests with each other.
We, also, asked people, how they would feel, if for any reason we took away their mobile phones. This proved to be a tricky question, because people tend to say that they could live without their shell phones, but can we actually be sure about it? As it concerns about our survey, most people say they are addicted to their mobile phones. 9 of 10 people say that checking their phones is the first thing they do when they wake up and the last before they go to sleep. They want to feel connected 24/7! As George told us, “It’s all about connection!” Moreover, their average of the time that spend daily on their smart phone is 5.5 hours.
2/10 people admitted that they check their smart phones, when they are out with friends and family. Although 9/10 try to put aside their phone, when they with company. Nevertheless, they think that having fun and sharing content, for example though stories and videos seem to come unconsciously, almost “naturally”.
People have realized the power of the mobile and as a result they use it for everything through their day (for work, university, transformation, lists, entertainment). Even though mobile is the most popular gadget to the persons we asked 100%, most of them won’t spend the entire day on mobile. At home or work they prefer other devices, like PC or Notebooks. This doesn’t mean that they don’t check their phones at first chance.
Lastly, as it concerns fitness apps, it seems that everyone has experienced a workout through instructions of an influencer or professional and only 3 over 10 users, the “heavy ones”, as we call them, use biometrics, mostly smart watches and similar staff, which are convenient and useful during workouts. Between the people we asked for our survey, one of them is a micro-influencer. By that we mean, that makes his own research, he checks new exercises, he tries fitness products and he films his own fitness videos with workout instructions.
From those conclusions, we were led to some interesting insights.
- Millennials are control freaks. They want to schedule everything. Their phone is a helpful tool for that purpose
- The phone is their personal assistant. It helps them with whatever they want to do through the day (8/10 responded that they cannot live without it)
- Self-esteem for millennials is very high, that’s why they see social media as a self-branding tool
- They are used to be comfortable, in their own place, so they don’t spend much time and energy on regular shopping (10/10 responded that they do online shopping)
- It’s a cautious and not gullible generation. They are always on alert for online thefts. (some of them they don’t trust online payments at all)
- They want to belong to communities with the same interests and hobbies (they all agreed that they have the same interests with their friends, so they use their phone in the same way)
- They care about the face to face interaction (9/10 try to put aside their phone when they are with friends)
‘’Heavy fitness users’’
• They are always connected with some type of gadget. (they care a lot about biometrics)
• They see Influencers as professional instructors.
• They love to share their passion on public (2/3 share things either to promote their work or for fun)
‘’Light fitness users’’
- They have the need someone to motivate and inspire them (4/7 follow influencers for that purpose).
Comparison with the global mobile trends
After conducting our research and finding out the mobile insights, we want to compare them with the global mobile trends. How are they linked with the global researches around the world?
First of all, it is indisputable that mobile is the dominant device on people’s daily routine. Not only do they communicate via mobile phones, but they accomplish all the needed tasks from keeping themselves updated to watching videos. Especially, since mobile video is a field that continues to blossom, companies invest big sums of money on online video advertising.
Moreover, as we find out, Millennials spend many hours on social media and especially on Instagram. That is a fact, which companies take into consideration and that’s why social commerce has a significant growth. Social media are used as sale channels, since they have the ability to attract customers. Specifically, people tend to follow many influencers on social media, which has caused a big shift on marketing investment from traditional media to influencer marketing. ‘’ The market size for the strategy will exceed $8 billion in 2020, according to InfluencerDB’s State of The Industry Report.’’(Natalie Koltun, 2019)
One of the most interesting insights that we came up with is the fact that Millennials use their mobiles as their personal assistant. On a global level, personal assistant devices (with AI technology) are in growing popularity. ‘’Smartphones are now serving as the ‘gateways’ into a variety of other devices, such as fitness trackers, smart watches, connected home devices and virtual reality devices that rely on smart phones for control, connectivity or processing power’’(GSMA). In the future smartphones will be the control point for everything!
You can read the rest parts of the project here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 7.
If you want to see the whole project go to➡️ http://mobiletrends18.tilda.ws/
Thank you!
Team members: Elena Tsakiridou Marina Karvouni vasia tagatidi
Hashtags: #Mobile #CollaborativeConsumptions #panteionUniversity
Resources:
Gaby Hinsliff, “Has strong become the respectable face of skinny for young women?”, The Guardian, Wed 17 Jan 2018 06.00 GMT Last modified on Wed 17 Jan 2018, Last view at 22/1/2019,
Evgeny Morozof, “From Airbnb to city bikes, the ‘sharing economy’ has been seized by big money”, The Guardian, Tue 27 Nov 2018 06.00 GMT Last modified on Tue 27 Nov 2018, Last view at 22/1/2019,
Robert Williams, “Forrester: Millennials boost growth of sharing economy”, Forrester, Published Jan. 30, 2018, Last view at 22/1/2019,
Natalie Koltun, “6 trends that will shape mobile marketing in 2019”, Published: 7 January 2019, Last view at 22/1/2019 : https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/mobile-marketing-trends-2019/545424/?fbclid=IwAR3z4oY71pIyMfdPlvLOUb0UBAHxk85AfLyxAds4hvJD-6iU7F6UTlOV0QU.
GSMA (2017), “Global Mobile Trends”, Last view at 22/1/2019, https://www.gsma.com/globalmobiletrends/
