technology

Consumers Still Wary Of Wearables

Consumers still aren’t completely sold on the idea of wearables. 

According to a survey of more than 1,000 American consumers by Colloquy, nearly two-thirds (63%) believe wearables are too expensive. At the same time, more than half (52%) said they don’t know enough to fully understand them.

“The perception is because of the newness [of the devices], you’re going to pay more,” Jeff Berry, Colloquy’s research director, tells Marketing Daily. “The ‘too expensive’ comment may be more about the perception of the devices than the reality for consumers.”

Also, a third (35%) of consumers said they viewed the devices as a passing fad that may not be worth the investment. However, for devices in the early stages of acceptance (as wearables are right now), that’s not a surprising statistic. “There will always be a core segment of people who think these things will come and go,” Berry says.

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While these findings are necessarily unheard of when it comes to a new category like wearables, there are some things the makers and marketers of these products can do to convince consumer’s they're worth the expense, Barry says. 

“Most advertising talks about the cool factor and what you can do with them rather than the results people are getting from them,” he says. “These companies could build some case studies about how people are using them.”

Also, they could capitalize on the “nerd/cool” quotient of wearable technology. According to the survey, more than a third (35%) of consumers described wearables as “cool nerdy,” Berry says. 

“Nerdy is the new cool,” he says. “There’s a certain cool factor for things that people would have once seen as geeky.”

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