It’s again that time of the year when we publish our annual Millennials Survey. This year's research covers the desire of the largest demographic in the United States for everything mobile, with a particular emphasis on how the oldest Millennials (those aged 29 to 34 years old) are shaping today’s economy with their demands for a faster, safer, and more convenient mobile experience.The third edition of our annual report presents the results of a major survey of Millennials that Osterman Research conducted on behalf of Mitek. More than 3,000 smartphone-equipped Millennials were surveyed about a variety of topics related to their use of mobile devices, their purchase habits, their desire for improvements in the ability to use mobile devices more extensively, and their life goals.
Mitek’s Millennial Survey: Love of Selfies Is Transforming Mobile Commerce reveals how Millennials make extensive use of their smartphone’s cameras, with 85% of them snapping selfies quite often (more than 5 times a day on average).
But Millennials want to use their camera functionality even more – 1 in 7 Millennials considers the smartphone camera to be the most important feature of their device – and to get even faster results: many of them decide not to sign up for something from a computer or at a physical location because of the time it would take to complete the application.
Surveyed respondents said that they actually want to enjoy an even more mobile lifestyle, looking forward to being able to use the camera on their smartphone to take photos of their credit cards or driver’s license instead of keying in payment information, transferring funds, or verifying their identity when enrolling for new accounts.
This research shows that the number of Millennials that would like to use selfies and/or pictures for transactional purposes is dramatically greater than the proportion that currently does so, only because they are not given the opportunity.
Among the more common activities that Millennials undertake is completing applications to enroll in various services and making financial transactions.
To date, 77% of Millennials have a moderate to strong preference for the ability to carry out these activities using their mobile devices, but 74 % are at least occasionally prevented from doing so by providers not offering this capability or implementing it poorly.
For Millennials, it’s all about a great mobile user experience
First impression lasts, especially for such a time-poor, always on-the-move population as Millennials. In fact, 45% of Millennials simply will not do business with providers that do not offer a satisfactory mobile experience, according to data collated by Osterman Research.
Only 4% of Millennials currently use selfies to authorize purchases, but 46% would like to do so, while another 39% of Millennials surveyed would like to use selfies to verify their identity so they can open new accounts, send and receive money or get a mortgage from their mobile phone, from anywhere, at any time.
Convenience appears as the main driver for Millennials, together with security and ease of use. For example, more than 30% of Millennials would rather use selfies to enroll for new accounts or services than going through traditional onboarding processes.
Likewise, 42% of the oldest Millennials strongly prefer taking a picture of their driver’s license instead of filling out a form.
Find more about how to engage with the largest demographic in the United States with our downloadable infographic.