Why QSRs Can No Longer Ignore Smartphones And, Soon, Wearable Tech
If your QSR brand is still wavering on smartphone initiatives such as mobile ordering apps, then consider this statistic: 88.2% of Australian millennials use their smartphones every day.
QSR brands that want to draw in millennials and convince them to open their wallets -- and who wouldn’t want to with the millennial population spending $200 billion annually – should be looking to increase their smartphone reach.
“Mobile is very much here and happening in hospitality,” said Christopher Adams, Vice President, Food and Beverage, APAC at Oracle Hospitality, based on the results of an independent study the company commissioned surveying more than 9,800 millennials in eight countries in early 2016.
“The results underscore how technology is altering consumer expectation and presenting hospitality operators with an unprecedented opportunity to win millennials’ business.”
When respondents were asked “Think about your personal use of technology. Which of these do you use every day?” nearly 9 out of 10 Australian millennials selected smartphones, making it the most ubiquitous among the presented technologies.
The second most widely and frequently used technology among millennials would be laptops with 76.2% saying they use it every day.
Desktop computers continue to be indispensible to a large portion of Australian millennials, with 43.9% saying they use it every day, a trend that might be worth keeping in mind among QSR brands that want to dive exclusively into mobile browser technology altogether.
“Many in Australia continue to use desktop computers, and a greater proportion of Australian millennials use desktop computers than their counterparts in the United States and United Kingdom,” says Adams.
Meanwhile 40.6% of Australian millennials use iPads or other tablets every day, making iPad-friendly websites and apps still a strong strategy for attracting this young and tech-savvy cohort.
But a surprising and emerging technology that QSR brands should excited about is wearables. Among the eight surveyed countries, Australian millennials are one of the most prolific users of Apple Watch or other smart watches with 8.6% of respondents using it every day, a smidgen behind millennials in United Kingdom who led the charge in wearables use with 10% saying they’ve already embraced some sort of smart watch.
“The evolution of wearable technology will be one worth noting,” says Adams.
