Localised marketing, GDPR, digital skills: 5 killer stats to start your week

1. Consumers have mixed views on location-based marketing

Only 27% of UK smartphone users are comfortable with brands using their location data, with 48% stating they are even uncomfortable with their mobile storing data about their location.

However, despite this 43% find location-based communications helpful if it comes from a store they’ve already used, compared to 24% if there is no existing relationship.

Meanwhile, six-in-10 people (59%) believe big brands should be doing more to support their local area, with expectations among parents (70%) and those aged 18 to 34 (63%) and 35 to 54 (62%) even higher.

Source: Mindshare Futures

2. Marketing directors lack digital skills

While marketing directors have a good understanding of general marketing and digital strategy compared to the rest of their team, they lack practical digital skills.

For instance, when tested about their knowledge of PPC, marketing directors scored just 29%, compared with executives (34%), managers (31%) and department heads (39%). In regard to ecommerce knowledge, marketing directors scored 26% compared to executives (37%), managers (41%) and department heads (42%).

When their data and analytics skills were put to the test, marketing directors scored 32%, compared with executives (33%), managers (35%) and department heads (42%).

Source: CIM

3. Most people aged 16 to 34 don’t think GDPR goes far enough

Three quarters of UK consumers aged between 16 and 34 don’t believe GDPR goes far enough, with 77% saying additional regulation is needed.

However, there’s an apparent disconnect between opinion and reality with just 11% saying they ‘carefully consider’ before accepting cookies on websites, suggesting that the ease of accessing online content overrides data-sharing concerns.

On top of this, 72% say they feel annoyed about the amount of times they have to accept cookies to access content, yet only 2% say they don’t typically give consent.

Most respondents (82%) are aware of the GDPR, with 65% saying they understand cookies are used to personalise content, and 45% know information is shared with other companies for advertising purposes.

Source: The Exchange Lab and Populus

4. Smartphone and tablet sales slow as summer comes to an end

Online retail sales increased 12.8% year on year during August, down 1.7% from July, and notably lower than last year’s drop of 4.8%.

Smartphones and tablets have been most impacted by slowing sales, having hit an all-time low, up just 10% year on year. While smartphone growth alone came in at +26.7%, it was the lowest growth since September 2014, and a significant drop on last August’s +53.6%.

Multichannel mobile retail only just maintained growth, up 1% year on year, while online-only mobile retail growth was up 15% for the same period.

Source: IMRG Capgemini

5. One-in-four believe brands’ values are just as important as their products

Almost a quarter (24%) of the UK population believe a company’s values, actions and corporate reputation are just as important as its product attributes and features. This group of people has been dubbed ‘CorpSumers’ meaning they make purchases, employment and investment decisions based on company reputation.

The vast majority of this group place high value on reputation factors such as corporate citizenship (98%), employee wellbeing (97%) and opinions of leadership (94%), which directly impacts their purchasing decisions.

This group also expect brands to take a stand on social and policy matters (93%), and 84% believe this even if they don’t agree with the brand’s position.

CorpSumers will reward companies that take a stand through their actions: 90% would try a company’s products for the first time, 83% would switch to a competitor, the same number (83%) would pay a premium for that company’s products and 73% would share the company’s information on social media.

Source: MWWPR and Wakefield Research