2015 Mobile Consumer Survey

The 2015 Mobile On-Demand Economy Survey was designed in accordance with our guiding principles to surface key topics and trends in the mobile  commerce space. Through this report, The On-Demand Economy sought to better assess smartphone user behaviors that would help guide the decision making of industry participants. We surveyed 1,348 US mobile smartphone owners across different operating systems, cities, age groups, and genders in May 2015 and uncovered a wealth of valuable, actionable data and insights.

An enormous amount of effort was put into the construction of the survey in order to offer a comprehensive perspective on the behaviors and preferences of mobile consumers. The distribution of survey participants was carefully constructed in collaboration with Survata to capture as close to a census representative sample as possible of smartphone owners in some of the most technologically forward cities in the US. Here were our key findings:

• Mobile app developers are competing aggressively for installs,  but the battle for users doesn’t stop there – only 1/4 of the apps installed on a smartphone are used each week

• Unpaid marketing channels are the most common means of discovery

• Smartphone owners are still hungry for great new apps

• Although not a primary means of discovery, mobile advertising is still an effective tool for promoting app awareness and installs

• Awareness levels of new on-demand services are still relatively low with the exception of Uber

• Penetration rates of different mobile commerce services differ by age, gender, and location, given the various value propositions and consumer needs

• We are in the midst of the next evolution in digital commerce: web -> mobile web -> apps

• iOS users demonstrate higher purchasing activity than Android users

• Every consumer vertical needs to have a mobile strategy

• The large majority of consumers who purchase through mobile apps do so with extremely high frequency

• Offering a promotion / credit is an attractive value proposition to get a user to make their first purchase through a mobile app

• Appealing to the optimal mobile consumers is challenging as promotions / credits may get a first purchase, but do not necessarily change long term purchasing behavior or customer loyalty

• On-demand services are just beginning to hit their stride, and the market opportunity is massive

You can find the abridged version of the report here and contact us at [email protected] for the full report.