The Highly Prized, High-Tech Restaurant Consumer

The term “high-tech consumers” refers to people who own the most connected devices. These consumers are also the most motivated to up their spending when given access to convenience-focused digital features at restaurants.

When we asked consumers in survey to pick technologies that would encourage them to spend more at restaurants, some key patterns rapidly emerged.

High-tech consumers said they were motivated to up their spending by a far greater number of digital features, choosing eight features on average and demonstrating above-average attraction to each of the top 10 features we studied. Meanwhile, the average consumer selected five features, while low-tech consumers picked only three.

For high-tech consumers, mobile apps (56%) and the ability to pay online (57%) are among the factors that would lead them to increase their spending. Loyalty programs motivated a much larger number of high-tech consumers (51%) than average consumers (37%) to spend more. Such programs are more likely to be appealing to millennial consumers and consumers with higher incomes.

Our survey found that most high-tech consumers use loyalty programs, viewing them as important builders of restaurant affinity: 60% of these patrons use loyalty programs at QSRs, and three-quarters of respondents said they do so at table-service restaurants.

Restaurants that want to build relationships with this sought-after demographic might discover that loyalty programs are the fastest way to win them over, as high-tech consumers are more likely to consider whether a loyalty program is available when choosing a restaurant: a majority of high-tech consumers use loyalty programs at restaurants, compared to less than half of the rest of the consumer populace.

Nearly 37% of high-tech consumers said they considered loyalty program availability of loyalty “very” or “extremely” important when choosing a QSR, and 48% said so about table-service restaurants. And less than 20% of low-tech consumers think of loyalty programs in this way, while just 5.4% of consumers not enrolled in a loyalty program consider them highly important.

Download the latest edition of the Digital Divide Report, a Paytronix and PYMNTS collaboration, to learn more about how restaurants can win over high-tech consumers.