Until quite recently, few were familiar with terms like “the connected consumer” or “the connected economy” even though they’re both happening right around them. As the pandemic era is teaching us, there’s an accelerated need to not only understand these consumers, but to also make informed decisions on how best to digitally serve them.
In creating a serviceable profile of the connected consumer and their expectations going forward, PYMNTS has conducted several studies looking at the issue from various angles.
As PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster recently wrote, “To organize and keep track of the developments in the ConnectedEconomy™, PYMNTS has divided it into eight pillars, each of which represents a building block of the global digital economy that is rapidly taking shape,” adding that these pillars “go well beyond the classic way that businesses are categorized and measured today. Each one represents a set of broad-based activities in which people and businesses engage to accomplish a discrete goal. More importantly, the pillars are where digital is radically redefining the activities and the outcome.”
Those pillars of the connected economy — how we eat, shop, pay, live, travel, bank, work, communicate, have fun and stay well — are replacing prior offline behaviors with new “online solutions that [have] more capability and less friction than physical-world options.”
As this new consumer comes into clearer focus, entire industries from banking to dining to healthcare are innovating at a furious pace in a quest for digital experiences that cement loyalty through convenience, rewards and experiential enhancements that are transformative.
See also: How Consumers Live In The Connected Economy
The Connected Revolution Permeates
Key learnings from PYMNTS research paint a portrait of a connected consumer population ignited by digital-native demographic groups, notably millennials and Gen Z, who took the first bold steps into app-based services and connected devices. Seeing this, others soon followed.
As researchers found in the study, How Consumers Live In The ConnectedEconomy™, 92 percent of all consumers have ordered for products and/or services online, with over 85 percent paying bills and banking online, and 72 percent booking travel via digital channels.
However, as that study states, “Digital adoption goes beyond these individual actions. A pattern emerges in each pillar: Consumers who use one digital tool tend to avail themselves of others. Thus, more than 70 percent of consumers have not only paid their bills online, but they have made account-to-account transfers and used apps like PayPal and Venmo.”
The data clearly shows people from all age groups and earnings brackets growing more comfortable with “connected everything” in the accelerated pandemic timeframe.
One telling proof-point is connected device ownership.
“Forty-five percent of consumers own many more devices than a smartphone or PC — six devices on average, up 33 percent over the last two years,” Webster wrote, adding that 13 percent of consumers own 12 devices on average. “They aren’t gadget collectors, since they don’t buy multiple devices that do the same thing. Their connected device purchases are more deliberate and purposeful, connecting them to different experiences and for specific purposes.”
Read the study: How Consumers Live In The ConnectedEconomy™
‘Connected Everything’ is the Next Normal
Tying together countless devices, apps, platforms and physical locations into a seamless, connected whole is remaking entire industries, complete with standouts and laggards among them.
There are numerous examples. Streaming media is an especially interesting case, and cable TV cord-cutters traded out an early form of connected living for a better, faster and usually cheaper digital experience.
It’s part of the wider trend, as Webster recently wrote, that “just like cable’s cord-cutters and cord-slimmers, consumers will move away from the traditional and entrenched providers of shopping and checkout experiences to those that can most efficiently meet the consumers’ new, digital-first habits and preferences.”
Grocery stores and restaurants have responded to the shift better than most other sectors, offering a further glimpse into the emerging profile of connected consumers and the disruption it carries.
Commenting on another national study, Webster recently observed that “17 percent of all consumers reported using digital platforms such as Instacart to order and pay for groceries instead of going to the grocery store to buy food. That’s a whisker ahead of the 16 percent of all consumers who reported ordering restaurant food online or from delivery aggregators instead of going into a restaurant to order and eat it. It’s a statistical dead heat.”
Trendlines are rarely this clear. Consumers like connected living at home, in their cars — basically anywhere and anytime they have a signal and a device to participate in connected living.
As PYMNTS found, “A greater share of consumers report purchasing retail products online over the past 12 months than in store (75 percent versus 64 percent, respectively). Ninety-two percent of consumers have placed an online order for a product and/or service at least once recently. More than three-quarters of consumers have conducted at least some of their banking online.”
It’s a trend that shows the connected economy, and those who love it, are moving in compressed time towards an increasingly connected future that is seamless, personalized, secure and omnipresent.
Read: The Big Jump: Pandemics And The Connected Economy’s Bigger, Faster Future
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More