18% of us own a fitness tracker, but nearly a half don’t use them
More and more market research companies are jumping on the fitness tracker craze.
The latest study comes from CivicScience, a young market research and opinion-gathering company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The study comprised an online questionnaire answered by more than 45,000 adults in the US over the last two years and weighted against US Census figures.
It is a well known fact that fitness tracker sales have seen a very strong increase over the past year. According to the survey, most people expect this growth to continue.
Some 34% of those surveyed expect activity trackers to become more popular over the next year, 16% expect they will become less popular and the remainder either expect them to stay the same or are unsure.
Trends over the past two years show that the number of individuals who believe trackers will become more popular increased from 33% to 35%. Those who believe they will decrease in popularity went from 12% in 2015 to 16%. Despite a stronger increase of the ‘less popular’ choice, adults are still two times more likely to answer ‘more popular’ than ‘less popular’. Which means that wearables manufacturers are doing a good job keeping consumers interested.
While still relatively high, the number of people who don’t own or plan to buy a fitness tracker in the next year has come down. The number of people who own a fitness tracker has now reached 18%. This includes the 8% who say “they don’t use the device much”. Some 7% said they are likely to purchase an activity tracker over the next year, which should bump up the figure to 25%. Just over 60% of of those who don’t own a fitness tracker have no intent to buy one in the next year, 10% down on last year.
Demographically, of those who plan to purchase a fitness tracker, nearly two thirds are women, 36% are Millenials and 41% are parents. By income level, those planning to buy one are in a similar income level to the general population.
Finally, statistics show that 51% of those who own a fitness tracker exercise several times a week compared to 48% of those who do not own a device. Whether they were more active before purchasing a device or whether their activity level has increased since the purchase is not really clear from the report.
The study concludes by saying that it is looking pretty good for wearables manufacturers. Consumers are still willing to buy fitness trackers and they expect the popularity to increase in the coming years.
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