Loading ...Don't worry, Apple: grown-up fans might be mad at you, but the students still love you. That's the conclusion of market research company SurveyU, who not only asked 1,000 college students whether the $200 price reduction of the iPhone 8GB would make them more likely to buy one in time for the start of the school year, but whether - for those that had paid $599 - they were mad at Jobs & co.
"Initially, college students were cautious about the hype surrounding the iPhone - media-savvy Millennials are more circumspect than previous generations, relying on word of mouth reference and direct experience to shape their opinions. College students have seen how the iPhone performs and with this reduction, sales among college students will see a solid bump with an even bigger jump upon the next release" Dan Coates, Co-Founder SurveyU
So it turns out that "importance of price" as a factor affecting purchase jumped from 80-percent prior to the reduction, to 90-percent on September 5th following the announcement. SurveyU are quick to dismiss any idea of an anti-Apple backlash, however:
"Using a five point scales wherein students indicated their agreement with two, diametrically opposed statements, non-purchasers tended slightly toward supporting Apple and their decision while purchasers tended only slightly towards reprimanding Apple for the sudden and dramatic price shift" SurveyU report
What does all this mean? Well, SurveyU have made the pretty bland conclusion that students have "reacted positively" to the price cuts and that they believe demand among college-age buyers will rise. Looking at their stats, though, it was a mere 0.5-percent rise between pre- and post-announcement in the "immediate intent to buy" category (rising from 0 to 0.5-percent), whereas "wait until v.2" stayed steady at 22-percent of respondents.
If I may, I'll make a prediction that most people will respond positively to the price cut (in fact to just about any price cut) and that, because more people can afford the iPhone, more will buy it. There, and I didn't even have to interview 1,000 students.
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If I could interject, you missed some key data:
Those intending to purchase ‘within a few months’ doubled from 2% to 4%.
Those intending to purchase ‘when their current contract runs out’ jumped from 4% to 11%.
Considering that there are 18 million college students in the US, Apple will see a 150% increase in sales from college students prior to the next version release.
Anyone interested in the full results can download them from: http://www.surveyu.com/images/press/iphone_release.pdf
Thanks for the link, Dan, and the feedback. I appreciate that the stats you quote are certainly more heartening for Apple - albeit still in the minority compared to the group waiting for v.2 - but it does seem a stretch to extrapolate from a sample of 1,000 to the full student population.
Out of interest, did the survey ask those who said “when their current contract runs out” how long that period might be? It would be interesting to see how many of those have sufficient contract left for them to assume that by the time it runs out v.2 of the iPhone might be released.
As Benjamin Disraeli said and Mark Twain popularized: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
The rise from 2% to 4% or 0% to 0.5% could be a bit of signal, a bit of noise or a bit of both. You can be relatively certain that when a number jumps from 4% to 11% on a sample of 1,000 that there is something real there. We didn’t ask when their contract expired, so we can anticipate that the 11% intent will be spread over a period from 1 to 24 months.
Your original sentiment that this is pretty obvious stuff was a fair point to make: College students are both price-conscious and tech savvy.
College students are holding off in anticipation of the inevitable ‘issues’ that people face on the first round of anything. They’re hoping for price drops to bring the iPhone into their frugal budgets and they’re ravenous for anything that makes life better, faster and cheaper.
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