Assignment 2 task 1 - How consumers use technology and its impact on their lives

Assignment 2 task 1 - How consumers use technology and its impact on their lives

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  The Brief Elizabeth Carey- 76996469 Unit 1 – Evolution of Marketing Digital technology has impacted the lives of consumers and businesses around the world. With access to the internet and the lowering cost of smart devices, audiences use the internet to improve their daily lives. In this connected world, access to information is seen as a necessity rather than a convenience. You will learn how audiences use technology to find information, to be entertained/informed and to live their lives. Following on from your previous assignment, you are developing a reputation as being knowledgeable in digital marketing. Now, the international interactive media festival South by Southwest (SXSW) are interested in having you speak at their next conference. They have asked you to prepare a presentation document and short video pitch to give them an indication of your knowledge of how audiences use technology and its impact on their lives.
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  Elizabeth Carey -76996469 How consumers use technology and its impact on their lives Fig 1,Start up stock photos, 2015. Pixabay. (Photograph)
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  Introduction Elizabeth Carey -76996469 Today I am going to discuss how consumers use technology and its impact on not only their lives but how it also effects businesses and marketers, along with how they will need to adapt to fulfil today’s consumer expectations. Technology is forever changing and daily becoming more and more important in our lives, so I will be looking into the changes over time on how we access internet and by which devices. Not only that but how we search for information, and how e-commerce and video consumption has changed and adapted over time.
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  Access to theinternet e.g. changes in the number of people accessing the internet, internet speeds, ect. Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 Fig 2, Households with access to the internet, 2018. CSO Statistical release (Graph) The internet was officially born in 1983, in the 90’s the world wide web was created as well as internet companies such as Amazon, Ebay and google which saw the rise of over 255 million internet users by 1999. (Pew research centre, 2014) June 2019 has seen over 4.5 billion internet users. (Internet world statistics, 2019) As seen in Fig2 below – in 2018, 89% of households had internet access – which stays unchanged from the year before but with a 17% increase from 2010. In 2018, the most common reasons for not having access to the internet were - no need for it, lack of skills or access to the internet elsewhere. (Central Statistics Office, 2018) Fig 3, The path to gigabit internet, 2017. ncta.com (Graph) In 2018 download and upload speeds began rising with 5G and Gigabit expanding. Mobile speeds increased by 15% while fixed broadband increased more than 26%. (Isla Mcketta, Speedtest.net, 2018) Gigabit internet is the next generation of broadband internet service which is believed to be 100x faster than today’s average broadband connection. (ihiji.com, 2014)
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  Access to theinternet e.g. changes in the number of people accessing the internet, internet speeds, ect Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 In 2017, over 70% of the worlds youth (ages 15-24) are using the internet which is significantly higher than the proportion of the total population using the internet. (itu.int, 2017.) Using the internet is a big part of the younger generations lives, as its something they have been brought up with. 92% of teens going online daily and 71% having more than one social media platform such as; Instagram, snapchat, Facebook etc as well as more access to games and instant messaging. Teens are typically more likely to stay online for longer than adults, as well as accessing the internet in different locations through their smartphone. (Extension.umn.edu, 2018) Fig 4, proportion of individuals using the internet, by age, 2017. Itu.int (Graph)
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  Digital devices usedby audiences e.g. people can access the internet via different devices Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 Fig 5, device usage, 2019. globalwebindex (Graph) On average the typical consumer owns around 3 different digital devices. (Katie Young, Global Web Index, 2017) However in 2018 computers, tablets and game consoles were used a lot less with the rise of smartphone technology. (Viktoriya Trifonova, Global Web index, 2018). As shown in Fig 5 above, the rise of smartphones being considered to be the most important to access the web rose over 30% in 3 years, whereas a desktop or laptop declined by 15%. In this time smartphones became faster and an easier way to access the internet, especially with the use of apps and the ease of instant messaging, this shows desktop usage is on the decline compared to other portable devices. Fig 6, Top online behaviours where tablets and PC’s are falling behind smartphones, 2019. Globalwebindex (Graph)
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  How customers searchfor information e.g. people use various online channels to search for information and recommendations Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 Generally, people tend to search the web by using three different key ways; Navigational queries, Informational queries and Commercial/ transactional queries. (Marcus Miller, 2019, bowlerhat.co.uk) Navigational queries is a search with an intent to visit a specific site or page. Informational is a question looking for an answer either at a specific or broad level and thirdly commercial is typically driven with an intent to buy. Go - Navigational Know - Informational Do - Commercial
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  What consumers buyonline e.g. people purchase different products/services online Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 Fig 7, Global e-commerce spend by category, 2019. Datareportal. In 2019 the biggest selling e-commerce category was Travel and accommodation spending a combined $750 billion over the past year, however Fashion & beauty had the strongest growth over the past year with a 17% increase. (Datareportal, 2019) The number of e-commerce has also grown over the past year with more than 2.8 billion people around the world now shopping online. (Statista, 2019) E-commerce affects businesses both positively and negatively. On one hand e-commerce makes businesses a lot more accessible to more people around the world, but equally makes the retail stores less necessary.
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  Online video consumption e.g.changes in the amount of video content consumed Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 Video content used to be confined to your TV where you would need to flick through the channels to find something you wanted to watch, now with mobile the online video game has changed and you can tune in wherever and whenever. One in three adults aged between 18 and 54 will use their smartphone as their primary choice for watching online video. (Megan Potgieter(thinkwithgoogle) 2016) People will tend to change what they watch on with what they’re watching, for example YouTube videos tend to be watched more from a smartphone, and others would rather switch on their tv to watch the news or sports. Fig 8, Amanda Zantal-Wiener, Online video device consumption, 2018. (Pie Chart)
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  Consumer trends e.g. howconsumers’ use of technology has changed over the past 3-5 years, reflecting on the areas above Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 • The rise of social media. With so many consumers now signed in with multiple social accounts, businesses are having to up their online marketing game and have more of a presence to be able to keep up with their competitors. However, social media has made it easier to interact with potential customers and get their name out to a wider audience. • Artificial Intelligence. The technology of AI has been constantly improving every year for the past 20 years. We’ve seen AI-driven driverless cars to facial recognition software. AI is still being worked on to be made more consistent and more practical, and could pose a threat in the future by putting employees out of work, if it can be proved to be able to do the same job as a human can. • Voice Assistance. Voice technology has improved over the last few years from mobile voice technology with Siri to the Amazon Alexa echo.(See Fig 9 below.) Businesses can benefit from voice assistance – for example when searching on google consumers will tend to go and look on the first page of results, if you ask voice assistance it will bring up one option- which is the business’s opportunity to stand out from their competition if they can manage to get that position. (Falk Rehkoph, 2019 ubermetrics-technologies.com) Fig 9, REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage (2019) ‘Prompts on how to use the Amazon Echo’ (Photograph)
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  Consumer trends e.g. howconsumers’ use of technology has changed over the past 3-5 years, reflecting on the areas above Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 A few examples of how technology is changing and the hottest new consumer trends in technology for 2019. Fig 10, Smart Pet Feeder, 2019. ABC News. (Photograph) A smart pet feeder which recognises individual pets using facial recognition technology. Fig 11, Translating earbuds, 2019. ABC News. (Photograph) The pilot of these translating earbuds were shown at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. These use the latest technologies in speech recognition, machine translation and wearable technology allowing users to have conversations without a language barrier. Used with a mobile app to able to switch to different languages. Fig 12, Intelligent Toilet, 2019. ABC News. (Photograph) This toilet features built in mood lighting, heated seat, surround sound speakers, water cleansing and dryer options as well as Alexa voice control commands.
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  Summary Provide a conciseoverview of the key points and emphasise the impact of technology on consumers’ lives. Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 As shown in my first two slides we can see how much more consumers use the internet on a daily basis with it becoming so accessible on different devices and no longer being tied down to one location to access. With a larger audience and plenty of social media platforms it means businesses have the chance to strive and reach a brand new audience along with having instant communication with customers to meet needs and wants. Consumers are able to search for information in 3 key ways – go, do and know. With artificial technology and voice assistance on the rise, again this can be a pit or peak to businesses. When searching online on average most people will go with what’s on the first page of their search engine, however if using voice assistance it will choose one company or page to direct you to, which for that top spot is a great way of getting ahead of their competition, but if you’re lower down on that first page you will not get that voice assistance redirection. The rise of the internet is very evident and especially looking at this years consumer trends at how technology is developing rapidly I believe that voice control and artificial intelligence will be a big part of future technology. Not only that but I believe from my findings that video consumption is now, and more businesses and marketers will need to jump on the trend to stay relevant whether that’s with more video ads, or more customer interaction on social platforms, for example with Instagram and Facebooks Live video tools to connect instantly to their audience. E-commerce is proving more popular also with ages 25-34 who are the most active and on average shop online eight times a month. (Ecommerce News.eu, 2018) 51% of consumers also preferring shopping online than going to a physical store – meaning if you don’t have a presence or a online store you could be missing out on a lot of business. In conclusion I believe business’s and marketers will need to keep adapting to meet consumer trends and be able to keep up with any competition. With smartphones continuously upgrading and them being the number one device consumers use to access the internet the idea of what's next will always need to be in the forefront of their mind. What the future has in store is hard to know but I believe AI will be a huge part with computers learning what humans know. Chat bots may start taking online customer service jobs. Voice control may take over the use of keyboards and video and images will become a more vital search tool than text.
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  Summary Provide a conciseoverview of the key points and emphasise the impact of technology on consumers’ lives. Elizabeth Carey - 76996469 The impact of technology on consumers lives definitely depends on the generation. The youngest generation (Gen Z) has grown up with a world of smartphones and social media platforms, where you can get in touch with whoever whenever and wherever you like. Millennials have equally grown up with the evolution of the internet and have seen how it began along with dial up and the birth of the world wide web. These two generations have this information as second nature, whereas the older generation are more likely to continue to shop instore, choose not to have online banking and prefer to call a friend or relative by landline instead of WhatsApp. In summary I believe the impact will be mainly positive looking forward with convenience and saving both time and money, being able to control your home remotely – switching heating on and off when you’re not there and checking into security systems as well as an increased insight into behaviour with being able to track your sleep, eating and health habits by wearing a watch that can monitor all and that I believe is just the beginning.
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  Reference list Elizabeth Carey- 76996469 Fig 1,Start up stock photos, 2015. Pixabay. (Photograph) Available at https://pixabay.com/photos/student-typing-keyboard-text-849826/ [Accessed 7th October 2019] Fig 2,Households with access to the internet, 2018. CSO Statistical release (Graph) Available at https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/isshh/informationsocietystatistics-households2018/ [Accessed 25th October 2019] Fig 3, The path to gigabit internet, 2017. ncta.com (Graph) Available at https://www.ncta.com/positions/the-future-of-super-fast-internet [Accessed 25th October 2019] Fig 4, proportion of individuals using the internet, by age, 2017. Itu.int (Graph) Available at https://www.itu.int/en/ITU- D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2017.pdf [Accessed 5th November 2019] Fig 5, device usage, 2019. globalwebindex (Graph) Available at https://blog.globalwebindex.com/trends/device-usage-2019/ [Accessed 5th November 2019] Fig 6, Top online behaviours where tablets and PC’s are falling behind smartphones, 2019. Globalwebindex (Graph) Available at https://blog.globalwebindex.com/trends/device-usage-2019/ [Accessed 5th November 2019] Fig 7, Global e-commerce spend by category, 2019. Datareportal. Available at https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2019-global-digital-overview [Accessed 5th November 2019]
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  Reference list Elizabeth Carey- 76996469 Fig 8, Amanda Zantal-Wiener, Online video device consumption, 2018. (Pie Chart) Available at https://blog.hubspot.com/news-trends/online-video- consumption-preferences-data [Accessed 5th November 2019] Fig 9, REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage (2019) ‘Prompts on how to use the Amazon Echo’ (Photograph) Available at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/voice-technology-personalization/ [Accessed 6th November 2019] Fig 10, Smart Pet Feeder, 2019. ABC News. (Photograph) Available at https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/photos/ces-2019-preview-hottest-trends- consumer-technology-60214107/image-smart-pet-feeder-60214237 [Accessed 6th November 2019] Fig 11, Translating earbuds, 2019. ABC News. (Photograph) Available at https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/photos/ces-2019-preview-hottest-trends- consumer-technology-60214107/image-translating-earbuds-60318783 [Accessed 6th November 2019] Fig 12, Intelligent Toilet, 2019. ABC News. (Photograph) Available at https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/photos/ces-2019-preview-hottest-trends- consumer-technology-60214107/image-intelligent-toilet-60318720 [Accessed 6th November 2019]