Capability: Consumer and Demographic Data

How wealth and asset managers should respond to the new FCA Consumer Duty

Posted on: 20 July 2022
How wealth and asset managers should respond to the new FCA Consumer Duty

New plans from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for increased consumer protection for financial services users, through a “fundamental shift in industry mindset” are to be confirmed by the end of July 2022.

The proposals include a new Consumer Principle that “a firm must act to deliver good outcomes for the retail consumers of its products”.

The regulator’s Consumer Duty directive is the latest in a series of measures tackling consumer needs in the financial services and wealth management sectors.

But how do the latest rules impact wealth and asset management firms? And how can a more effective use of data help firms increase customer knowledge and drive business growth, while ensuring compliance with the Consumer Duty?

How does the Consumer Duty impact wealth management firms?

Banks and building societies have moved steadily towards digitisation and customer-first policies over the past decade, but the wealth and asset management sector hasn’t moved as quickly.

While some firms have already adopted a business model that enables customer-led and technology-enabled strategy, it is only in the past 18 months that the importance of a data-led approach to wealth management has become prominent – and many firms are still playing catch-up. The Consumer Duty may well act as a catalyst for many to speed that change along.

The FCA is worried that, currently, financial services do not always work well for consumers, who are buying products and services that are not always fit for purpose, and not continuously receiving the best customer support.

Consumer Duty creates a shift towards making firms more proactive about the suitability of their products and services, to directly meet the needs of those they are sold to.

Wealth managers, along with other financial services firms, will need to improve consumer understanding, review the entire consumer lifecycle and journey, revisit how and what to include in customer marketing, and establish new ways to measure all these areas, in order to remain compliant.

“The new duty will drive a change in culture at firms. We expect firms to step up and put consumers at the heart of what they do, and we’ll be holding senior managers accountable if they do not.” warned Sheldon Mills, Executive Director of Consumer and Competition at the FCA.

Customer marketing – who are the new prospects?

Clearly, the FCA wants firms to better understand their customers. But how do wealth and asset managers do that? What steps do they need to take to make their business fit for purpose in a digital world and comply with Consumer Duty?

Regulatory pressure provides an opportunity to capture the market – collecting data and enriching it in order to tailor distribution and marketing.

Wealth managers are seeing changes in both customer behaviours and types of customers, and are moving away from the traditional investor to hunt out wealth in other areas – as they fight for market share. Meanwhile, fintech disruptors are raising the bar with innovative offerings.

Consumer insight is key. Young investors who are creating or inheriting their own wealth are increasingly important, as the older consumer market depletes. They are joined by more entry-level investors – and both personas have very strong customer service expectations.

These younger, and often more knowledgeable, investors are the customers of the future. They know they can invest quickly and easily online and they expect the same level of speed and ease of use in all their financial dealings.

A data-driven customer experience

Firms need to better understand the current and future needs of investors, those who might have a sophisticated, historic book of customers, now need to reach a broader audience – and CACI can help firms do that.

Consumer Duty firmly indicates products need to suit their customers, and firms need to be where investors can see them in order to market more broadly. Changing expectations might include more sustainable or green investments.

Those firms that recognise the need for better customer understanding are starting to bring in people with wider customer-first experience from other industries – increasing the sector’s pool of knowledge.

It is key to firms’ long-term growth that they do more with consolidated data – because if they don’t, they can be sure their competitors will. Firms will have data on customers, but many don’t know how to make the most of it.

At CACI we can help firms:

  • Understand their customers
  • Understand the market and identify opportunities
  • Know where potential and current customers are located, and their value

We can help brands across the wealth management, asset management and financial services space with demographic data and behavioural insights on investors.

Wealth and asset management firms looking to grow their business need to consider the importance of over- arching information and scalable transformation. Rich demographics on lifestyle, attitude and behaviours in the investment market, can empower better target distribution activity – driving revenue growth and increasing client engagement.

CACI will:

  1. Provide detailed understanding of current investor behaviour needs and growth opportunities
  2. Quantify the acquisition opportunity across regions to inform growth and investor engagement strategy
  3. Enable optimisation of marketing performance across channels
  4. Improve distribution performance through digital direct and intermediated channels
  5. Demonstrate compliance with Consumer Duty to show that they are looking at, and understanding, customer needs

If you are interested in reading more, download our latest whitepaper ‘Acquiring new high net worth clients – What wealth managers need to know‘.

Or if you would like to find out more about how we can help, explore our services or get in touch.

The new FCA Consumer Duty – CACI is ready to help

Posted on: 20 April 2022
The new FCA Consumer Duty – CACI is ready to help

The new Consumer Duty is an important directive from the FCA to protect consumers. It recognises the need to focus on consumer outcomes and to put these outcomes at the heart and centre of the organisation.

For financial services organisations to achieve the requirements of the Consumer Duty, there is a need for change. Change will require overcoming common obstacles around data, communication plans, marketing goals and working practices.

To be in line with the Consumer Duty, firms need to know their customer, adapt their products, and use data to drive messaging.

CACI is here to help

The result is that Financial Services organisations will need to improve consumer understanding, have a complete view of the consumer lifecycle and journey, revisit the selection and messaging used in communications, and establish new means to measure.

Operational siloes, fragmented data, incomplete consumer profiles, product-oriented campaigning, and slow/linear working practices all create barriers to achieving the FCA’s directives. Our experience has been that firms may be dealing with several of these blockers at one time, requiring more holistic solutions than a traditional agency or consultancy can provide.

CACI’s unique positioning in the market as part agency, part consultancy, part data provider and part system integrator ensures that we can really drive value for your business. Our services and data products have always been there to connect firms with their customers. Some of the ways we can help:

  • Enriching consumer data – Nationwide rely on CACI’s demographics and lifestyle data variables to provide deeper insights on who their customers are and the size of the market opportunity
  • Segmenting and insights on consumer audiences – the Money and Pension Service have used CACI’s services to build a profile of the nation’s wealth and indebtedness
  • Fixing data quality and fragmentation – working alongside their own data teams, CACI are improving the quality, latency, and reliability of the data that Bupa holds and uses in marketing
  • Improved marketing and communications tools – Virgin Money have invested in market leading communication tools, CACI has designed bespoke customer journeys to leverage this new technology
  • New reporting and measurement – from attribution through to complex propensity models, CACI can visualise and report on the KPIs that really matter
  • Efficient operating models – through improvements in the people and process side of marketing operations, CACI can strip out 80% of the time required to launch a campaign from idea through to results. This will enable you to send more targeted campaigns to the right consumers
  • Product insights – our Retail Finance Benchmarking services provide vital insights into the market for personal loans, current accounts, savings, and mortgages which supports and enables product design, proposition development, and provides an objective measurement of market performance.

The Consumer Duty is an important directive with vital intention to build trust between financial institutions and consumers. For help with your journey to compliance, please contact either Paul Sene or Cara Bramwell to find out more.

Further reading:

 

 

The impact of Covid on customer behaviour and nursery growth strategies

Posted on: 12 April 2022
The impact of Covid on customer behaviour and nursery growth strategies

As the country learns to live with Covid, CACI’s data and consumer research is revealing what the new normal looks like for the nursery market.

Customer Movement is on the Rise

Let’s start with the positives.  Remember just how much more freedom we have than we did this time last year.  The contrast between the two maps based on anonymised Mobile App data are stark.  The map on the left shows movement activity levels in the last week of March 2021 relative to pre-Covid (Early March 2020) for Central London.

Source: CACI / Digital Envoy

Dark blue shading shows areas that movement levels were way down on pre-pandemic across much of London – not surprising given that restrictions were really only lifted in early April 2021 for all but essential activities (albeit including trips to nurseries).  The map on the right is the same week this year, and shows swathes of red across much of London, highlighting that activity and visits to many of these areas has returned to almost pre-Covid levels as we learn to live with life after Covid.

Despite the fact that we are seeing record numbers testing positive for the new variant there is no doubt that many are back out and getting on with their lives after a painful couple of years.

 

New Behaviours and Attitudes

But we have emerged into a different world.  The right-hand map shows that the recovery in movement is not universal.   There are still clear areas of blue and lighter red in office dominated parts of the city, and around the major stations of London.  The same pattern is seen in cities across our county.

Analysis of the data reveals that our city centres are only now returning to something close to what we would have called normal before the pandemic, and transport hubs are seeing visits about 25% down.  But regional towns have grown in popularity, with visits up by about 40%.  So, clearly we have changed our activities, and it looks like many of these behaviours are set to remain.

Our towns and cities are changing, and we can see it happening around us.  But it’s a complex picture.  Whilst some have speculated that we are going to witness a long-term boom in the suburbs as everyone moves out of our towns and cities – this is not the case.  Despite the jolt that Covid brought there are too many interactions at play for all the old links to be broken.

CACI’s research, carried out as restrictions were eased, revealed that many 18 to 34 year olds, many in the target age groups for nurseries, were keen to return to our towns and cities.  These included people from across the demographic spectrum with groups with very different lifestyles – from ‘City Sophisticates’ to ‘Struggling Estates’ in CACI’s Acorn classification amongst those most keen to return to urban living.

Consumers are listing eating out, entertainment and leisure activities as the top reasons for wanting to return.

In short, for many our towns and cities remain places of fun, choice and opportunity – and this hasn’t changed with the pandemic.  What we are seeing is that towns and cities are responding to this need.  At CACI we have never been so busy in supporting our leisure clients who are busy trying to extend their portfolios, filling the units vacated by retailers hit by the step change in online shopping triggered by the pandemic.  And other urban offices and former retail units are being repurposed as urban living – a clear sign that everyone is not heading for the countryside and suburbs.

For many, working patterns look like they have changed for the long-term.  Evidenced in the conversion of office space to other purposes and in the areas of blue on the map of central London in worker dominated areas.  Our research revealed that workers claim that 2 to 3 days is the optimum number of days they would like to spend in the office, and this seems to be becoming the norm for many.   But, it is important to remember that not everyone has this option, including most workers in the nursery sector.  It is very easy to think everyone can work from home easily, but affluence, age, location and job role all clearly play a part.

Source: CACI / Digital Envoy

Analysing Kantar’s TGI survey data from 2021 shows that, even in a year scattered with various work from home advice, only 25% of those surveyed said that they worked from home every day, or some days, as their ‘normal’ behaviour.

The chart, using CACI’s broad Acorn Categories to dissect responses, clearly illustrates that it is the ‘Rising Prosperity’ that are most likely to be working from home.   These are younger, well educated professionals moving up the career ladder and living in our major towns and cities.  38% of this segment claim to work from home at least some days, and 25% of this is made up of those working from home every day.  In contrast only 20 or 21% of lower paid, lower qualified segments ‘Financially Stretched’ and ‘Urban Adversity’ have the luxury of even working from home some days.

Source: CACI / Kantar

As a result of this shift workplace nurseries will no doubt continue to suffer, as many will prefer the flexibility of nurseries closer to home, in line with the shift to ‘hybrid’ working, with many neighbourhood nurseries benefiting from this change.  The number of parents requiring nursery spaces is unlikely to be impacted by the rise in home working, as many learnt during the Covid lockdowns that working from home and providing childcare don’t mix.  However, many nurseries are likely to see increasing staffing and pricing complexity with parents expecting a level of flexibility that reflects the new-found flexibility in their working hours and location.

So, despite big changes there is no evidence to suggest a need for wholesale changes in where acquisitive nursery groups should be focussing their attention.  The big urban to rural shift is not happening and indeed CACI’s research shows that even at the peak of the pandemic 10% of house moves were from villages to towns and cities.  Tracking planning applications reveals huge amounts of new dwellings under construction or being proposed in our urban areas and, whilst much of this will have been planned before the pandemic, it’s not that easy to turn a tanker.  It is simply not possible for such a shift to happen without fundamental changes in planning policy and housing stock.

So, in summary whilst the change in residential patterns are moderate it is the behaviours of those residents that have changed, and the following are just a few more key behaviour changes that CACI expect to remain:

  • Communities are eager to stay local
    • This is good news for nurseries operating well-run community nurseries. But it is increasingly important for nurseries to engage with their wider communities and larger groups need to take care not to look like corporate outsiders
  • Social governance is increasingly in the spotlight
    • With consumers expecting their suppliers to behave ethically and transparently
  • Minimising waste and environmental impact is mainstream
    • All nurseries now need to ensure that they are meeting parents’ expectations here and that they are living out the values of care for the environment that the children will inherit
  • Digital is critical to recruitment and engagement
    • There is no doubt that digital is here to stay – so if you are not happy with your website you can be sure that it is putting off potential customers and if you are not sharing key messages with your parents via emails and portals then you may get left behind

New Challenges and Opportunities

Unfortunately, with inflation and rising rocketing fuel prices, there is no doubt that many families are going to be facing increasingly tough decisions about where to prioritise their spending in the year ahead.  This could impact customers’ ability to afford childcare, especially if their salaries rise above the eligibility threshold for free places, but their true disposable incomes fall.

Rising fuel costs for nurseries will compound the challenges of rising wages already driven by the shortfall in staffing that so many in the sector are facing and these need to be factored into nurseries strategic plans.

Successful nurseries should take note of these consumer and market changes, play to their strengths in these areas and they will thrive.  But ignore them at their peril as the sector faces the two emerging, and partly inter-related challenges of staffing and the cost-of-living crisis.

Creating a strategic segmentation to help TSB understand and drive money confidence

Posted on: 14 March 2022
Creating a strategic segmentation to help TSB understand and drive money confidence

TSB is pioneering a new kind of banking for Britain – one that’s simple, straightforward and cares about people. The bank offers friendly, honest and convenient banking that’s designed to meet customers’ needs and equip them with money confidence.

The Challenge: a segmentation to drive business growth

TSB had a creative-led segmentation developed by its brand agency to help understand its target audience, but it wasn’t fully effective. Justin Bell, TSB’s Head of Insights, Strategy & Planning explains:

“We couldn’t use it for media planning and it couldn’t be overlaid on our customer base.

We knew we needed something more practical in terms of consumer insights and choices of media. At pitch, our new media agency the7stars, came up with a more effective segmentation that we could use for media selection. We wanted to take this forward another step and overlay it onto our own base. We had for some time been working with CACI, mapping their Fresco financial lifestyle segments onto our customer base. We therefore initiated a joint project, working with CACI and the7stars to develop the segmentation further.”

The Solution: accurate, current segmentation that reflects consumer behaviour

Working in collaboration with TSB’s Research and Strategic Insights Team, CACI created an evolved segmentation that clearly distinguishes different customer types and provides clear segment profiles and personas.

CACI used Fresco and other external consumer demographic datasets to give TSB bespoke behavioural and lifestyle insights into its target customer base.

Justin explains, “We started with a market-wide segmentation, based on all UK adults. We’ve subsequently created a version of that for our customer base.

CACI provided a proven methodology and approach drawn from their data expertise and experience. Once we had clear segment parameters, our data team mapped them to our base.”

The Results: tailored propositions, content and media selection

TSB is actively using the segment insights to develop its media strategies and in campaign briefs, creating content tailored to target consumers’ profiles.

Justin continues:

“Part of the output of the segmentation was to rank the segments in order of money confidence. Working with CACI, we agreed on a weighted mix of key questions in the TGI consumer survey, to derive a money confidence score. We support people with content, products and services to help raise their money confidence and we need to be relevant to those that need that support most.

At the heart of it is a money confidence score: we’ll measure our progress against our purpose: Money confidence for everyone everyday. We hope to see a gap opening up between the money confidence levels of our customers and that of non-customers, with a continual improvement against today’s baseline.

We believe this segmentation will continue to pay dividends as we develop our channel and campaign marketing – we’re looking forward to tailoring products and services even more to meet customer needs.”

Continue reading the full case study

To view the full customer story click here.

If you’d like to discuss developing a strategic segmentation with our data science experts, please get in touch.

How CACI’s data supported the University of St Andrews

Posted on: 3 February 2022
How CACI’s data supported the University of St Andrews

The challenge

Jonathan McDougall-Bagnall is the Planning Innovation and Infrastructure Manager at the University. He explains: “The data project is part of our Contextual Admissions Policy launched several years ago. We are constantly striving to widen access to our institution and ensuring that it remains accessible to all. Historically we have used SIMD (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) data and school performance data to identify candidates in Scotland who may require the support of our contextual admissions policy. We wanted to widen this to applicants from around the UK and needed to find suitable equivalent data. Each UK country calculates their index in a slightly different way, so we couldn’t make a direct comparison.”

The solution

The St Andrews team researched the data sources available and concluded that Acorn was the most comprehensive, accurate and current dataset for their needs.

“We use the Acorn postcode database as an integral part of our decision making system, to help us determine which candidates come from areas of deprivation,” says Jonathan. “We have the database and the profiler software, though we mainly use the database directly. The data is simply structured and easy to use, it comes in the same format every year. It’s very straightforward to pull into our systems, because of the consistent format and quality.”

The benefits

Joanna Fry, Access Manager: Widening Access & Transitions, says, “Our admissions system includes codes attributed to socio-economic deprivation and other widening access criteria, drawn from Acorn data and other sources.”

“Both the admissions team and our academic colleagues can now look at students in groups and compare peer groups of those with similar access codes. This gives us vital context to benchmark students from similar environments and circumstances. For example, it can help us interpret the range of exams they’ve taken; the candidate’s school may not have a wide range of subjects on offer. It also can help us understand how personal statements and references are written, depending on the influences and level of support that a candidate may have had.”

We want students with the best potential; the Acorn data helps us identify potential that goes beyond certified grades. We have plenty of evidence to show that students can do extremely well even from constrained academic and teaching backgrounds. If we understand the area and school that candidates come from, alongside their grades, we have a much clearer picture of their ability to perform.

Joanna Fry, Access Manager: Widening Access & Transitions, University of St Andrews

Download the case study

Click here to view the full customer story. To find out more about how CACI can help you support your organisation, please get in touch.

How CACI supported Landsec track performance through 2020

Posted on: 13 October 2021
How CACI supported Landsec track performance through 2020

The challenge

The opportunity for Landsec to re-engage customers and their spend as we emerge from the pandemic is substantial. 2020 saw the greatest level of consumer disruption ever seen in living memory with mandatory retail and leisure closures, stay at home orders, and schools and offices closing.

Landsec’s key questions included; who is driving performance, where they are coming from, how much are they spending per category, what they are doing in centre, and how are they engaging ? This helped the Landsec team identify why guests have reengaged and how to influence future behaviours. Tracking information was also used to provide the data points needed to allow Landsec to measure ROI on marketing and leasing activity.

The solution

CACI’s solution used transactional spend and mobile data to track real life actual behaviour in the centre. Mobile data looks at GPS tracking from mobile apps and helped Landsec understand the visitation patterns.

Transactional spend data is derived from credit and debit card spend data from multiple sources, including top UK retail bank and credit card companies. Again, this data was used alongside CACI’s data sources to and understand which categories and brands were driving spend and transactional changes.

Catchment spend for all the centres was also tracked using the transactional spend data, as well as a valuable indication of online spending for the centres’ shoppers.

The benefits

The data was used by the Landsec centre teams to fully understand the immediate impacts of the pandemic and how the centres performed over this period. In addition the research gave them an understanding of how best to react to the easing of future lockdowns in 2021. The research is now being rolled out across the whole of 2021, to track performance on a regular basis for some of Landsec’s key assets.

Read the case study

Read the full customer story here. To find out more about how CACI can help you support your business, please get in touch.

Covid and the Future of Population Forecasts

Posted on: 6 July 2021
Covid and the Future of Population Forecasts

It’s hard to know the current population, let alone predict populations accurately for 2050 and beyond.  Yet that’s what many of our clients are required to do for long-term planning.

As we flagged in our recent round-table on the challenges of population forecasting, the government are currently using two different estimates of the ‘current’ population to present the latest Covid vaccination rates. This explains why the English national rate is higher than any of the regions – a mathematically impossibility raised in a recent edition of Radio 4’s “More or Less” podcast.

This is why it’s important to start from a consistent and robust estimate of the current year population by age and gender that users can rely on, at a local level.  Something that CACI achieve using a proven methodology respected by JICPOPS, the Joint Industry Committee for Population Standards, at Postcode Sector level.

We then model it right down to the unit postcode level needed by our many clients that rely on us for an accurate understanding, not just of population numbers, but also their demographic and lifestyle characteristics.

Building on this solid base we project forward nationally as far as 2069 using a consistent set of inputs at a granular geographic level to give credible and affordable ready-made local forecasts. Inevitably the uncertainty of forecasts increases as we look further forward in the crystal ball and we offer custom solutions to our clients seeking to tackle forecasting in areas of greater uncertainty using bespoke inputs.

An uncertain future

But, despite increasing computer power and open data access, it is getting harder to forecast over long-term horizons.  The following are just a few of the challenges faced building forecasts based on today’s uncertainty.

It’s been 10 years since the last Census gave us a solid population base, and many don’t realise we have a long wait until the 2021 Census can feed the latest forecasts. And whilst the ONS reports a great response rate, there may be local nuances resulting from capturing the data during a pandemic.

The jury is still out on where Brexit will level out on the nation’s migration patterns and even climate change could start to impact where people can, or want, to live within current planning horizons – potentially reshaping local populations from a complex mix of local and international movements.

This is before we even think about the unknows from potential changes in planning policies that have moved up the agenda only this week following the Chesham and Amersham by-election.

And then there is the uncertainty from Covid.  This week it was widely reported that UK deaths exceeded births for the first time in 40 years and sadly we know that death rates in specific age and demographic groups have far exceeded long-term patterns, making trend-based forecasting harder.

But will Covid also cause long-term change in local populations in other ways?

Will university cities become a thing of the past, now that lectures have moved online?  Will families seek to support their older relatives closer to home after the challenges seen in the care sector?  Is the ‘race for space’ out of our cities here for the long-term or will people have to return to work in the office despite our survey revealing that most want to return less than 3 days a week.

In short, there’s a lot of uncertainty.  And you can be certain that any of these trends will vary locally and by demographic group.

Our use of mobile data and surveys during Covid has revealed clear insights into the behaviours of consumers during the different stages of the pandemic that can support decision-making into the uncertain future.

I’d love to discuss how we can support you in creating future scenario models using our data. Please get in touch and we can discuss your challenges in more detail.

Paul Langston
Associate Partner | Communities & Government
plangston@caci.co.uk

Understanding Differing Consumer Attitudes on the path to EV adoption

Posted on: 5 July 2021
Understanding Differing Consumer Attitudes on the path to EV adoption

The market for Electric Vehicles is growing consistently – of that there can be no doubt. But market statistics only tell one part of the story.  While we are clearly on a path towards mass EV adoption there are still many different opinions about electrification – some see advantages, while others perceive disadvantages – and consumers will weigh up these views differently as they make their decision about whether to purchase an Electric Vehicle.

Our survey suggested that many consumers are thinking positively about Electric Vehicles.  42% of respondents said that it was likely that their next car would be an EV, with 64% of those suggesting this purchase would happen within the next 2 years.  But this level of engagement is not consistent across all consumer groups.  In order to bring more consumers on board it is necessary to understand more about the attitudes and concerns of certain groups in order to realise the potential within them.  Because it is when we overlay the survey results with Acorn (CACI’s powerful classification of UK consumers) that we see some fascinating results.

For instance, the survey identified that Affluent Achievers (the wealthiest household group) who perhaps would have been considered a core market for EV’s are only marginally more likely to say they will buy an EV as their next car (48%). This is because when we drill-down into this category we find that affluence is not the only issue – age plays a significant part too.  The older, affluent groups within this category (specifically the Group called Mature Money) are far less likely to say they will purchase an EV next (42%) than the slightly younger “Executive Wealth” (51%).

Ask why, and it appears that Mature Money still consider battery range a key obstacle, despite their being more likely to make shorter trips. Importantly, unlike other Acorn Categories, both Executive Wealth and Mature Money are not particularly concerned about the provision of public charging points – probably due to the likelihood of living in a detached house where they could place a private charging point. But it is definitively range anxiety that is most pressing for the older more affluent groups.

This is a prime example of how the market can accelerate the adoption of EV’s among these consumers, allaying their concerns about range and amplifying the convenience factor (and reassurance) of charging at home.  Furthermore, these consumers are financially savvy, the survey shows they recognise the long-term savings on cost-of-ownership that EVs bring so these factors need to be amplified with these groups to get them on board.

With EVs it’s clear that the car buyers of the future may not be the same as the car-buyers of the past.  Rising Prosperity (younger professionals, often living in metropolitan environments) show the greatest inclination to purchase an EV (12% above the average). Interestingly, these consumers have not previously shown much interest in car ownership, preferring instead to use other mobility solutions (e.g. public transport or taxis).

One factor that has been identified through CACI’s wider research is how the spread of Covid-19 has resulted in these consumers looking towards private mobility solutions in the attempt to avoid public transport. As a result, they seek the benefits of private vehicle ownership without compromising their concerns for the environment.

However, despite being engaged in the idea of owning an EV, they appear unwilling to commit as they are more likely to wait 2 years or more before purchasing an EV. Price-point is clearly a big issue for this group, with higher living costs and relatively low disposable income, they are more likely than any other Acorn Category to admit that price is their main barrier to entry. Moreover, this group are likely to be living in urban high-rise flats or terraced accommodation so may not have the luxury of private charging points. This is identified in the survey as they are most likely to suggest that a lack of public charge points as the main barrier. In all areas of life convenience is key for this Acorn Category, so while they may be less phased about issues to do with range, they are put off by the perceived inconveniences of lack of access to a charge point (private or public). As a result, the market needs to do more than just offer an affordable range of EV’s.  Investment in public charging infrastructure, ensuring it is accessible and convenient (encouraging further investment where development is still lagging) will be crucial for getting these groups on board.

The final Acorn Category we focus on here is Comfortable Communities – characterised mainly by middle-affluent households. If EV ownership is to hit the “mainstream”, then surely these are Groups where adoption needs to increase the most.  The survey indicates many variations in attitudes across this Category, although price is a common theme in their perceived disadvantages and barriers.  Particularly interesting is the observation that respondents coming from the Groups that are characterised by rural populations are still reluctant to view EVs as a viable mobility solution.

Only 36% say it is likely that their next car will be an EV and 67% specifically quote range as a disadvantage.  While these rural Groups do acknowledge the economic advantages of ownership and recognise the convenience of private charging, they also see a lack public charge points as a significant barrier to ownership.  Furthermore, it is within this Category you will find the highest likelihood of consumers stating that it is the lack of an established second-hand market for EVs that is putting them off.  Therefore, while there are undoubtedly challenges in attracting these consumers to EV usage in the short-to-medium-term, the long-term prognosis looks good, particularly once the second-hand market for EVs becomes more established.

These results of this survey are fascinating and show that public perceptions of EV ownership are driven by consumers’ age, lifestage, affluence and where in the country they live.  Government and industry initiatives to accelerate the rate of EV adoption need to be aware of the nuances and differences in consumer opinions and ensure that each concern is addressed appropriately as the industry looks to make the next big leap in EV adoption.

Please get in touch with us if you have any questions or want to learn more about our survey results.