On the Run: Using Smartphones to Track Millennial's Purchase Behavior
Justin Bailey
Karen Benezra
Michael W. Link
The Nielsen Company
Hala Makowska
Jeff Scagnelli
The rise in on the go food & beverage consumption, particular by Millennials (18-29 yrs.) has brought increased attention within the food & beverage industry. The ability to offer insights into this unique purchasing behavior beyond simply what was bought would be a great asset to the industry. For the research community, this offers an opportunity to investigate the usage behavior of an on the go consumer, as data collection occurs. Building on previous longitudinal repeated-measures approach research (Bailey et al., 2011), a pilot test was conducted where respondents were provided an Android smartphone pre-loaded with an app-based mobile survey. The survey was launched by the users whenever they made immediately consumable purchases during the course of a month. This sample was comprised of about 275 millennials (18-29 yrs.) in the southern California area. Questions included: where they were, what they purchased and what the motivators for the purchase were. The survey incorporated barcode scanning, along with taking pictures of the products to augment the survey data. Use of an Android smartphone including voice and data package was leveraged and provided as an incentive for the respondents during the test period, combined with a monetary incentive paid at completion. This paper will examine the response rates, user engagement, data quality, and user experience during the month long pilot study. This research adds to previous work to better understand on the go mobile behavior and product consumption.
