Bespoke Survey Insights

With federal student loan payments resuming back in October of this year, it’s been one of the most hot button issues over the course of 2023. Back in September before the payments resumed, we ran a large N survey on consumers to see how they would react to having to make payments going forward. 34% of respondents who had their student loans paused stated that they had 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. Personal care and beauty were the most resistant to cuts, followed by tobacco, streaming music subscriptions, video games, furniture, and streaming video subscriptions.

It would be putting it lightly to say that Carvana has been on quite a wild ride this year. In January, we published an article titled “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 $62.59 and is currently trading at around $53 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. 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.

Consumers broadly view food delivery as more of a luxury than a necessity. DASH continues to lead all food delivery platforms in terms of popularity, with UBER coming in at second. We ran a deep-dive analysis on consumers that use both DASH and CART for food delivery purposes to gauge why each customer base preferred one over the other. We found that those who prefer DASH do so because of the speed and reliability aspects of the platform, with DASH being seen as quicker in both delivery times and app navigations. Respondents who favored CART tend to do so because of the greater selection and variety on the platform.

Throughout 2023, we found that Bath and Body Works was one of the names that garnered the most interest from our clients. BBWI continues to have one of the strongest brand reputations among consumers relative to key competitors. Many of BBWI’s customer base prefers shopping in-store as opposed to online, and interest in their new line of laundry detergent products has increased over the past year.

A major theme through 2023 has been the account sharing crackdown that Netflix has implemented. We’ve been running surveys asking consumers what they would do in the event of an account sharing crackdown since it was a mere rumor amongst the investment community, and have continued to run them throughout its’ widespread implementation. We’ve found that the share of respondents whose account they access that does not live with them has declined sequentially through the year. Among those who pay for Netflix themselves, a declining percentage said they let someone living outside their household access their Netflix account. Of those who access someone else’s Netflix who they do not live with, the share who said they had trouble accessing the account in the past month increased from 11.6% in July to 23.2% in our October wave. Around a quarter of paying Netflix subscribers report having had to enter a code to re-authenticate Netflix in the past 6 months (16.1% of those who access someone else’s account who they don’t live with report having to re-authenticate). The share of Netflix subscribers on Standard with Ads ticked up slightly q/q, but remains the least popular option based on survey response. Of respondents on Standard with Ads, 18.9% said they were sharing an account with someone they do not live with before they signed up. 39.6% said they were not previously accessing Netflix in any way and 34.8% said they were on a higher price Netflix plan.

From the turmoil at Twitter (now X), to the introduction of Threads, to the continued dominance of TikTok, it’s safe to say that 2023 was another big year in the realm of social media. When Threads was introduced we saw it jump off to a hot start, with many believing that it could pose a real threat to the dominance of X. Since its July launch however, it has fizzled out in terms of main stream popularity and has not been gaining traction with consumers m/m according to our surveys. Respondents indicated that Threads usage would be incremental to their overall social media usage as opposed to a replacement for any of them. Threads NPS has continued to worsen over the course of its lifespan from -45.83 in July to -72.01 in October. Consumers continue to point toward data privacy issues being a top concern relating to social media, but the majority have no plans on deleting their accounts any time soon. Feedback towards Instagram Reels continues to skew positive, and sentiment towards Reels has improved in relative comparisons to TikTok.

Coming into this year, inflation was a major concern amongst consumers. Since January however, inflation expectations have reigned in, but there still remains much uncertainty heading into 2024. Our consumer sentiment readings towards the economy and personal finances were soft compared to historical readings, with sentiment towards the housing market reaching new lows m/m. Despite a strong rally in the equity markets towards the latter half of the year, respondents of our surveys leaned bearish looking into the new year. The share of respondents that reported living paycheck to paycheck has decreased in recent months, and a drop in interest rate expectations points towards consumers shifting their focus towards the housing and stock markets.

If you’ve paid any attention at all to the healthcare or consumer space over the past few months, then it’s safe to assume that you’ve been made aware of Ozempic and other GLP-1 medications by now. The diabetes drug has seen a dramatic uptick in popularity over the past few months due to the weight loss and impulse suppression effects that it has on its users. As the drug has skyrocketed in popularity, the investment community has taken notice, and rightfully so given the implications that a “miracle” weight loss drug could have on the market and society at large. Now, if you’re familiar with us, then you known that when the investment community takes interest in something like this, then we’re going to run a survey on it, and GLP-1s are no different. We recently launched two consumer surveys covering GLP-1 medications, including a 10,100N group custom deep-dive containing 662 active users. Since the group custom survey was proprietary, we are limited in how much of it we can share, but we wanted to flag a handful of charts from the 140+ pages of insights to socialize what we have with the investment community at large.

Awareness

Awareness of these drugs are highest amongst those with conditions such as diabetes, sleep apnea, and obesity. Respondents who stated that they have an interest in taking GLP-1 medications are more likely to be in the process of trying to lose weight than the average consumer. Among those who are not interested, top reasons include not being overweight/diabetic, being concerned with the side effects, and general skepticism about drugs.

Are GLP1s Actually Working?

Consumers who reported that they are currently taking GLP-1s stated that they have lost weight since starting the drug, and a plurality of them mentioned being very satisfied with their experience thus far. Many have reported reductions in their calorie consumption since they started on the meds.

Where’s The Downside?

Half of respondents taking GLP-1s have reported experiencing side effects, most commonly nausea and stomach pain.

Show me an example of how GLP1s are impacting the health care space..

60% of GLP-1 users who have sleep apnea report improvements in their condition since starting GLP-1s, but the majority (95.6%) plan to continue their CPAP device usage going forward.

What about Consumer retail, give me an example of an impact there:

On the retail front, snack foods seem to have taken the biggest hit in terms of reductions of spending & consumption frequency because of GLP-1 usage. We found that ~37% of consumers who are currently on GLP-1’s have either slightly or significantly increased their consumption of snack foods in the past 12 months, while ~37% either slightly or significantly reduced their consumption habits.

This post is merely scratching the surface of the data that we have collected on GLP-1 medications. If you’d like to gain access to our GLP-1 reports, or want to hear more about our platform as a whole, please reach out to [email protected].

If you cover Netflix in any capacity, you’re probably aware that for the first time ever, the streaming giant released a report of it’s most watched titles through the first half of 2023. This move prompted us to brainstorm on how we could do some analysis of our own to determine what shows and movies Netflix subscribers are most recently engaged with. With the help of ChatGPT, we were able to analyze 32,000 survey responses from 40+ monthly waves of surveys along with a database of 3200+ titles of Netflix originals, to tell us what percentage of the last things watched by respondents each month were originals vs non-originals.

We found that historically, non-originals make up most of what consumers are watching on Netflix. Over the past few months however, there has been a fairly significant shift toward consumers watching more original content on the platform.

When we asked ChatGPT to list the top titles mentioned and then asked it to cross-reference the originals database to label each as either original or non-original, 7 out of the top 10 names listed were Netflix Originals, with Stranger Things far and away taking the top spot.

We then asked ChatGPT to create word clouds of titles by category across all 32k+ fill-ins.

When asked if they were considering cancelling their Netflix subscriptions, 16.8% of respondents said yes, with pricing being their top concern. This concern with pricing has increased every year since we began asking this question, from 67 mentions in 2021 to 124 in 2023.

This week, we’ll be launching a survey focused on credit card trends, mobile payment apps, student loans, BNPL, and other topics.

We are using a combination of traditional survey methods and we are incorporating free form fill-in text to be analyzed for signal with ChatGPT.

If you have any interest in participating, please email [email protected].

ChatGPT: I’ll provide a concise overview of the survey questions

1. Age of respondent
2. Gender identification
3. Household income range
4. Employment status
5. Change in annual household income
6. Possession of an emergency fund
7. Ability to cover unexpected expenses
8. Living paycheck to paycheck status
9. Confidence in spending on essentials and non-essentials
10. Race/Ethnicity
11. State of residence
12. Credit score range
13. Challenges with credit history
14. Current loans/debts
15. Priority of loan types
16. Credit and debit card ownership
17. Frequency of different payment methods
18. Average monthly card spending
19. Percentage of purchases on credit cards
20. Handling of credit card debt
21. Changes in credit card balance
22. Preferred types of credit cards
23. Importance of credit card features
24. Recent research into credit/debit card offerings
25. Understanding of point offerings with different brands
26. Primary use of selected credit cards
27. Student Loan Resumption – If they have been paying or not, how their spending has changed

Below are some year-in-review takeaways from our TEMU survey work. Our full report contains deep-diving competitive analysis with an array of retail and etail platforms and detailed identical item pricing analysis for Temu vs. Shein and AMZN. Start a trial with us today for more!

TEMU – A YEAR IN REVIEW

Awareness of Temu has increased considerably…

The share of consumers who shop Temu has increased, but October saw the first reduction in the share of consumers shopping Temu “regularly”

More people are shopping it, but among existing customers shopping frequency has pulled back some…

People who shop Temu seem to split immediately into categories of love it or hate it, based on their NPS readings…

Consumers use Temu for an array of product types, but clothing is number one…

Temu customers are more likely to use it for low cost items than high cost items…

Customers love it because it is cheap / has low prices…

But they complain about shipping times and quality…

Sentiment is generally positive, but has softened over time…