Friday, 26 August 2016

The Digital Capability and Trust Equation

Digital User, Digital Capability, Trust


With more than 1.8 billion smartphone users and nearly 2 billion people using social media worldwide, mobile and social are becoming the dominant modes of human interaction. In addition, wearable devices in the form of activity trackers, smart watches and even connected clothing are quickly emerging with more than 150 million users worldwide, tracking everything from steps and calories to heart rate, breathing and even stress.

This new breed of always connected and self-aware end-users is changing the rules for how companies do business and engage their customers. When it comes to segmentation of such technology users, there are two important dimensions to consider. These are:
  
1. Digital Capability
This is the ability of the user to make use of the latest technology features and functions to improve their quality of work and life. The extent of their activities ranges from basic usage of mobile apps and social media to more advanced usage of video chat, location based services, mobile payment services and wearable devices.

2. Trust
Trust on the other hand is the willingness of users to share their personal data. Users are pretty evolved nowadays and inherently realize that their data is valuable. In some cases they are willing to relinquish their privacy to get hold of personalized information (think fitness trackers, local search, wearables etc.) In other cases (contact-less payment services) less willing.

These two dimensions are not directly related. Digital capability by itself is not a predictor of how comfortable the user is with sharing information. Similarly, trust is no definitive indicator of the technology savviness of the user. However, when viewed as the two axes of a graph, they allow us to segment the present day digital users in an interesting way.


We will explore this further in another post.

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