Bespoke Survey Insights

Each quarter we run a survey tracking consumer trends within the fitness industry. In the latest wave of the survey, we did tons of deep-dive work on Peloton to better understand their customer demographics and how consumers view the company.

Of all of the fitness brands that we tested in the survey, Peloton was the most likely to be viewed as “more for wealthy consumers” as opposed to “accessible for all.” To add to this, there is a significant level of divergence in how Peloton is viewed by existing customers and how the broader pool of consumers view the company. Existing customers see Peloton as a high quality, luxury fitness brand while the majority of the broader consumer population sees it as just an expensive fitness trend. That being said, over the course of the survey there has been some degree of gradual decline in the share of consumers who view the company as a “luxury” brand.

The share of consumers who are aware of Peloton but do not own any products from them are more likely to view Peloton as an overall fitness and wellness company, as opposed to just a fitness bike company. Among consumers that do not currently own any Peloton equipment but are considering buying some, an increasing share expressed interest in purchasing the bike while a declining share expressed interest in the tread. Overall fitness product interest is on the upswing after reaching a series low in October of 2022. The data isn’t where it was during Covid, but has improved relative to recent history.

Back in May, Peloton announced a brand relaunch that included revamping their app by adding a tiered subscription feature. Peloton encouraged people to use the app even if they did not own Peloton products, so we asked consumers how interested they’d be in using the Peloton app without owning any of the equipment. We set a baseline level of interest in the share of non-Peloton equipment owners and found that around 15% of these respondents would either be “interested” or “very interested” in using the app despite not owning any equipment. Of the cohort of consumers that does own Peloton equipment, the share of them that only use the Peloton app has increased in recent quarters.

On Tuesday, September 19 2023, Instacart became the first venture-backed tech company to IPO since 2021. The stock opened trading at $42 a share, 40% higher than $30 a share which was initially anticipated and closed out its first day of trading at $33.70 a share. Investor sentiment has been wary as market conditions have not been ideal for growth-heavy tech companies.

Here at Bespoke, we published a survey and did some cross-tab work on CART consumers to see how the grocery delivery service is viewed through the lens of a customer. Sharing some key takeaways below..

Findings:

• Instacart usage surged higher during the pandemic. Since peak engagement , the share of respondents who use the service on a regular basis has regressed back to pre-covid levels. The share of consumers who state that they use it on an occasional basis, similarly surged higher during the pandemic, but has held more or less steady since.
• Overall awareness of Instacart has increased considerably since January of 2018
• Instacart users have been less likely to order from Amazon Prime since the beginning of 2022 (monthly usage of Instacart has increased slowly over time). That said, the share of Instacart users who did not have groceries delivered at any point in the past month has increased during the same time period.
• During the pandemic, Instacart user demographics shifted towards being more male than female and older cohorts adopted usage in a major way, as did higher income bands.

Excerpt of Charts:

Every quarter, we launch a survey covering social media names as a means to track consumer sentiment. Back in July we published the 40th volume of the survey. We aimed to understand specific trends within the space and had numerous questions relating to usage of Instagram Threads. Let’s dive in…

Threads insights:

• Relative to other social media platforms, Threads users are more likely to skew male, skew younger, and skew liberal (political affiliation)
• Among the base of users who have downloaded it, feedback has come back generally positive
• NPS among those who have downloaded Threads came back at 30, a high score but from our experience, lower than what is expected from a new platform.

Social Media Sector and App Specific Trends:

• Consumer trust in social media platforms has improved sequentially and self-reported engagement with social media apps is improving

• Concerns about privacy issues continue to subside. Awareness is there, nut each quarter there is less concern

• Consumers offer increasingly positive sentiment toward buying products through social platforms

• Twitter user have a net favorable view of Elon Musk owning the platform

• Instagram Reels feedback has improved sequentially

Back in January, we published an article on Carvana named “Is Carvana Over? The Consumer Angle.” At the time the stock was trading at around $4.20 per share and there was serious concern that the company would have to file for bankruptcy. Since the time we published that article, Carvana’s stock rose to a high of $57.19 and is currently trading at around $47 per share. In the article we chose to take a different perspective from what we were seeing from the financial community at the time, and decided to deep dive into how customers actually felt about the company. We’ve continued to track consumer sentiment toward Carvana throughout the year by means of a 10,000N survey that we refresh quarterly, and if there’s one thing that we’ve come to realize, it’s that consumers really enjoy the Carvana experience.

This is not to say that we were “right” or that the company no longer faces the headwinds that it did in January (i.e. threat of bankruptcy, problems with unit economics, etc.), it’s simply a way of showing how the use of surveys to track consumer demand can provide a differentiated perspective on a company.

We published the latest refresh of the survey last week and consumers felt more or less the same as they had in January about their experiences using the online auto retailer. When it comes to competitive dynamics, Carvana ranked near or at the top in terms of things like pricing, selection, and overall trust, NPS for selling a car to CVNA has improved since January and currently sits at 58, which is a very strong score. NPS from those who bought from Carvana also improved and currently sits at a series high of 69.

Customers stated that the convenience of Carvana is what they enjoy the most about purchasing a car from them. Since the early waves of this survey, Carvana customers have grown less and less likely to visit a dealership before buying from Carvana. Customers firmly believe that Carvana is a better experience than a dealership, and indicate a high likelihood of shopping for a car there again in the future.

Simply put, customers that use Carvana love the experience and consumer adoption of buying used cars online are still in the early innings.

Excerpt of Charts:

With student loan repayments set to resume in October, there have been questions as to how individuals that are straddled with student debt will react to having to pay off their loans every month. How will discretionary spending change as they resume? What industries will be affected the most? We ran a survey on US Consumers to dig deeper on this.

Since the pause on student loan repayments was enacted, a large portion of individuals with loans say that they have not made any payments during the period. 34% of the respondents who paused their federal loan payments said that they increased their discretionary spending because of it. We cross-tabbed our responses by age and found that an overwhelming portion of those who have been spending more, are likely to fall within younger age cohorts (recent university graduates). Of these respondents that paused their payments, a large portion stated that they would have to cut back on their discretionary spending once they resume. The top things that these respondents called out as something they would cut back on include eating out/food, clothing, and streaming subscriptions. Respondents who increased their spending during the pause period have a generally more optimistic view on their personal finances than those who paused their payments and did not increase spending.

We have a number of consumer spending categories throughout the report that show consumer activity by their status with federal student loan payments. We currently have another survey on student loan debt with a much larger N size that we’ll be launching at the end of this week as well. This is a topic we’ll be looking to track a lot more going forward as the pause comes to an end, so if you have any interest in gaining access to our most recent report or any of our future reports, please let us know. Sharing some relevant color below.

Start a trial with us today to get plugged into upcoming results…

Of all of the eCommerce platforms that we run survey and pricing analysis on, Wayfair continues to show up as one that consumers are more likely to shop at episodically. A large plurality of Wayfair customers stated that they primarily purchase goods from the website when they’re moving or looking to move. This poses the question as to whether or not Wayfair will struggle in the midst of a potential housing crisis. As mortgage rates continue to climb and seize up the housing market, there’s real worry for a company that relies so heavily on selling into a demographic of consumers on the move.

Our latest report is a pricing analysis that compares the cost of identical goods visually matched on both Wayfair and Amazon. We’ve run this analysis over the past 14 quarters and this particular quarter shows an interesting inflection in the data given the current backdrop.

Sharing some sample data below. Start a free trial today to access the readings from August and May of 2023.

Consumer opinions of BBWI have typically been relatively positive in our survey. The customer base has been with the brand for a while and it has strong unaided and aided awareness across multiple categories. In the past year, NPS has pulled back a touch, but in all, consumers really like the retailer.

One thing we are constantly on the lookout for when we analyze survey results across hundreds of companies that we cover is when one of them seems to buck a trend we are seeing elsewhere. It is no secret that online shopping engagement has increased in many sectors. It is usually either the preference of consumers or it has at least been gaining share as the preferred method of shopping.

What sticks out to us about BBWI is the degree to which customers prefer to shop it in-stores, as opposed to online. Not only is the degree of in-store preference stronger than most other retailers we run surveys on, that preference actually increased over the past 12 months.

BBWI is a name that we’ve noticed increasing interest in lately from the buyside. If you’d be interested to learn more about the name via our survey, request a trial below.

---

---

If you cover consumer in any way shape or form and don’t know about Temu, what kind of rock have you been living under?

We first heard of Temu late last year. We didn’t know much about it at the start – just that it was a really fast growing app and that the investment community was starting to notice. Earlier in the year when buyside folks would talk to us about the work we were doing and we mentioned Temu, most of them had never heard of it. Then a couple weeks later they’d circle back telling us that they were noticing the app more and more. Now, Temu is one of the topics we get asked about most often when folks are looking for survey data from us.

The charts below offer some color from our latest survey work on Temu, but it is only a small part of what we have…

Request a free trial today to see competitive analysis on which peers Temu is impacting the most, to see cohort level data, and much more…

---

---

We’ve all seen or heard the saying a number of times in investing circles… something to the effect of, if you are right and everyone else is wrong, it really doesn’t matter that you are right until eventually everyone else realizes it. If that moment doesn’t come, you can be logically right about something but wrong on paper when it comes to the P&L behind the idea. And tragically, the crowd has proven that it can go along being wrong for quite a while (even indefinitely).

If there is one thing we’ve learned after helping buyside analysts and PMs for 10+ years now, it is that they are very far from your average consumer. The average consumer can be messy – not always incredibly logical, sometimes reactionary and overly emotional, short-sighted, and sometimes uniformed or impulsive. Hedge fund analysts tend to be more analytical, disciplined, logical, and methodical. Stop me if you can see where we are going here, but there can be a disconnect between how a hedge fund analyst and the average consumer thinks and oftentimes you can park more than a truck between them. The trouble is that the sentiments and behaviors of the average consumer often underpin buyside investment theses, and you can’t bend them to your will with logic.

Every line item in a model is laboriously toiled over and countless dollars are spent on external data to gain marginal improvement in precision. Those data inputs are viewed as “need to have” because you can mathematically calculate the ROI of having that data in a post mortem analysis/backtest. If you move further toward the beginning of the idea funnel – it is harder to mathematically calculate an ROI on the inputs you use to generate ideas and to create a foundation of knowledge that will impact every assumption in your model.

Focusing on the idea gen, thesis support, and knowledge foundation – we believe there is opportunity both in the under-investment in data for that part of the funnel and in the disconnect between how institutional investors think and how the average consumer thinks.

The net/net of all of this, is that if you are investor you should consume more survey data and run more of your own custom surveys.

Request a trial to explore our library of surveys or contact us if you have any custom survey needs ([email protected])… you’ll be hard pressed to find a larger library of buyside generated surveys out there or a vendor that will get you high quality data at a faster speed.

Survey Audience: 1,000+ US Consumers Per Wave, Balanced to Census

History: 42nd Quarterly Volume (90 Slides)

Tickers Covered: AMZN, ETSY, W, EBAY, OSTK, WMT, TGT, Temu, Shein, Wish

Access: If you are a client, login to view the full report.

If you are not a client and are interested, request access here.

KPIs Covered:

• AMZN Prime | Did former subs find it difficult to cancel? What % of them were unintentionally signed up for Prime.
• All Platforms | Do customers shop regularly or episodically/irregularly?
• All Platforms | Episodic Shoppers – what is the catalyst that brings you to shopping the platform episodically?
• ETSY | How much does it matter to customers that they are shopping small business?
• ETSY | How do customers most commonly find themselves shopping Etsy?
• Consumer spending confidence.
• Popularity of shopping online, vs. in-stores, vs. at malls.
• Savings increased/decreased since Covid tracker.
• Impact on spending if respondents lose job / income declines.
• All Platforms | Perceived changes to sales/promo offers.
• All Platforms | Consumer trust.
• All Platforms | Customer loyalty.
• Furniture Purchasing | In-store vs. Online (pre / during / post Covid).
• Face mask demand trends.
• All Platforms | Shipping time feedback.
• AMZN / ETSY / W | Shopping engagement, number of items bought per month, mobile purchases, recent shopping feedback, expected shopping feedback, etc.
• W | Share of furniture items purchased from Wayfair, cross-shopping with Amazon for identical items, sentiment toward Amazon vs. Wayfair on pricing, selection, and visualization, comparing Wayfair to other online/in-person shopping experiences.
• All Platforms | Credit scores of each customer base.

Excerpt of Charts:

We just got back results from the 16th volume of our DPZ customer survey. If you are a client, head over to our portal to view the full report.

If you are not a client and would like to request access, please email [email protected].

Highlighting a Takeaway From Volume 16

Domino’s struck a deal recently for distribution through Uber Eats and Postmates in the coming months. The vast majority of customers would stick with Domino’s delivery even after it becomes available on Uber Eats and Postmates.

We have quite a bit more analysis in the report about the upcoming change and a host of other KPIs that we track on DPZ.

If you are a client, login to our portal to view the full report. If your not a client and would like to request access, please email [email protected].

Key Takeaways:

Autos and EVs

• Self-reported auto purchase activity has softened a bit sequentially.
• We have seen declines in those in the market to buy a car in the next 6 months who would choose luxury brands (non-luxury brands have received more consistent feedback). An increasing percentage of consumers (relative to February 2023) are saying that they think the vehicle they own is worth less than the amount they still owe on the car.
• Consumers have been stubborn to shift their thinking on the safety of autonomous vehicles. Over the entire history of our survey, they have viewed humans driving themselves as safer.

Tesla

• The share of those interested in getting a Tesla who want it because it is an EV has declined over time. These folks have been increasingly likely to say they are interested in Tesla purely because of the brand and/or look/status of the car or because of the technology / self-driving features.
• The price cuts from Tesla continue to have a positive impact on consumer opinion toward the brand, but interest in getting a Tesla is softer now than it has been in prior waves of this survey.

Sample Chart From Full Report:

Consumers who are interested in Tesla are increasingly more interested because of the brand/technology, and less because it is an EV.