A flight of fancy? What consumers think of the rise of the drone
Streetbees spoke to over 2,300 people around the world to find out if drones will take off
The drones are coming.
The American Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) estimates that the number of consumer drones taking to the skies is 1.1 million — in the US alone.
By 2021, it expects that number to reach over 4.5 million — and both Amazon and UPS are running pilot schemes for drone-delivery of consumer goods across a number of regions.
What do consumers around the world actually make of them, though? We quizzed our users, or ‘bees’ — in the UK, US, India, the Philippines, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa — on what they thought about the rise of the drone.
Boys and their toys
To begin with: most of us want one.
According to our bees, over half of us (53%) want one of our own, with that number climbing to 2 in 3 (66%) for under-25s.
Across regions, men were hotter on the idea of owning a drone than women. Compared to only 39% of females, 7 in 10 men want their own in the future.
And it shows in their purchasing habits. Of our male users with drones, over half (56%) bought them for themselves rather than being given it as a gift (33%). Women, on the other hand, are more likely to have been given one as a present (40%) than men, with 48% of them having bought their own.
Men were also more confident in their knowledge about drones. A full two-thirds (66%) of men say they know at least a few things about drones, compared to 41% of women. Asked to rate their drone-expertise, 9% of men said they knew ‘a lot’ about drones — for example, specific types and technical features — compared to 2% of women.
The future is coming
So what does the future hold?
Well, a lot more drones are going to be whizzing about overhead, to begin with.
When asked whether they agreed with the statement “In ten years, there will be drones flying around public spaces doing different jobs”, the majority — almost three quarters (74%) — said they agreed, and in India that number climbs to 81%.
When we asked our bees about the best uses for drones in the near future, aid was at the top of the list, followed by commerce.
In some areas of the world though, surveillance is seen as more important. Kenya (50%) and the Philippines (47%) put it as the second best use for the tech, just after emergency aid, and only 24% of Filipinos see delivery services as a good use for drones.
It’s not all clear skies
New tech doesn’t come without concerns, and our bees do fear what the drones might bring with them.
The overwhelming majority of our bees say that they are worried about drones being used for nefarious purposes — especially among the older demographics. 84% of bees over-45 say they are concerned, compared to 77% of under-25s.
In territories such as the Philippines and Nigeria, this view is even more pronounced — 84% of people in these countries agreed that they worry, compared with 75% in the UK and US, where drones for personal use are already more widespread.
That rings true of what might be done about drone misuse, too; when asked whether drone laws should be tightened up by governments, over two-thirds said they would be in favour — and over half (55%) of those considered themselves ‘strongly’ in favour.
What does this mean for brands?
Well, the value of drones is rather… up in the air.
There’s significant concern about the impact of drones becoming widespread without appropriate controls. However, with three-quarters of our bees expecting to see drones widely performing tasks in public in the next 10 years, the populace is clearly already preparing itself for big changes.
For commercial brands, society’s acceptance of drone-delivery for consumer goods means they should be paying close attention to changes in regulation and sentiment. In a retail space where efficient service and ease at the point-of-purchase are key, it may pay off to consider the future of home-delivery sooner, rather than later.
Other findings:
- Almost 1 in 10 people say they have owned a drone at one point, but managed to lose (or crash) it!
- 5% of our bees worldwide said that they’d never heard of a drone.
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A quick word on our methodology: The figures in the article are taken from global Streetbees community members, carried out in June 2018. All of the data was collected by mobile and web surveys, and is accurate to within 3 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
