I have a question following up on that of some of the other commenters. While it makes sense that the “connected consumers” will become the mainstream in coming years, what percentage would you say they make up of the overall population right now?

Thanks, and again, great job,

Marci Ikeler

@marciikeler

I do follow all the freely available stats and reports though and I really would be fascinated if there was solid evidence for these effects you have found in the early adopters being taken up by the majority!

In the report you mention widescale uptake of broadband as being an indicator – here in the uk we have huge uptake of mobile – most peoples grannies can text now! But often the folk that can text have no idea how to use the internet. They are certainly not “personalizing their experiences everywhere they go”. Your average punter is very unlikely to have behaviour like the readers of your report because they will be a very different segment of the population in terms of education and aspiration! I am very wary of making sweeping generalizations when it comes to technology adoption!

Having said that the spirit of your report is correct. I do agree that we are probably wildly underestimating how fast change could happen. Especially when people start getting the next generation of mobile phones.

And we do need to prove this with valid data – so that companies and governments start taking it seriously. I stand by my intial point your data is a fabulous indicator for where we are going but it doesn’t show that this is mainstream activity YET!

Thanks again
Lisa Tweedie

@lisatw

I want to stress the word “can” — this statement was never intended to be definitive. Rather, I wanted to point out (and, yes, stress) how immediate the medium can be in regard to consumer experience *and* how unique digital is where a consumer can move from awareness (e.g. clicking on a banner) through consideration to purchase (e.g via paypal) and then become either an advocate or the inverse. My intent was discuss the impact of digital’s immediacy, or velocity, on the traditional marketing funnel. Sorry for any confusion.

Additionally, while the data is interesting, I’d have to take issue with the writing of the report. There is no evidence in this data for claims like:

“Our findings lead us to believe that marketers need to dramatically rethink their future strategies, shifting the majority of their efforts toward actively engaging consumers”

or

“According to our study, the overwhelming majority of consumers who actively engage with a brand (e.g., follow a brand on Twitter or enter a contest) can evolve from passive reactors to advocates almost instantaneously.”

There is no way you can make the latter statement unless you measured the people’s brand affinity before and after the interaction, which you did not. This is confusing causality with correlation. It’s particularly unfortunate to make this claim given that your own data shows that 1/3 of people following a brand do so because they already buy that brand.

tl;dr summary – some nice data, very misleading report

As for the questions/comments from Urs and Lisa, the reason that we believe that “Connected Consumers” are the new mainstream is because our data correlates nicely to the work of Forrester, Pew, eMarketer and a number of others — though our sample size is not nearly as extensive.

I highly recommend “The Broad Reach Of Social Technology” from Forrester’s Sean Corcoran http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211,55132,00.html as just one data point. And Forrester’s “The State Of Consumers And Technology: Benchmark 2009, US” http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211,54959,00.html as another.

Thanks again for all of the thoughtful comments.

I agree with Lisa, after reading your report I wonder… mainstraim behavior…. where have you been in a cacoon? I understand you want to sell but hype gives research a bad name, does it not?

So do your own brand a favor and get more humble will you please.

Urs
@ComMetrics

Really enjoyed this report there are some interesting points and I liked the way you chose to look at early adopters. They should certainly give us hints about where we are headed with this. However I think it is a pretty big jump to say that this is now mainstream behaviour.

You didn’t really explain what leads you to make this claim? Can you justify it?

Lisa