Amazon Echo Changes Daily Routines

Amazon Alexa and Google Home Are Changing Consumer Habits According to Dashbot Survey

New technologies inevitably change consumer habits. At one time we called friends and family to hear the latest news about their lives. After the launch of the internet that activity increasingly shifted to email. The rise of social media moved that interaction to Facebook. More recently, it has migrated to messaging, Snapchat and Instagram. Changing habits makes new technology sticky. The new solutions become embedded in our daily lives. A new consumer survey by Dashbot suggests that Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant users are also changing daily habits.

Multiple Uses Per Day

The first finding of note is that smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home are not novelty decorations in the household. Dashbot found that 57% of device owners used them multiple times per day and 74% used them at least daily. More telling is that over 50% agreed that smart speakers had materially changed their daily routines.

This is the start of forming new habits that incorporate smart speakers. Edison Research has identified similar findings in terms of the high number of tasks that people perform using the devices–50% use them regularly for six or more tasks. IFTTT also found that 60% of its users interact with smart speakers at least four times per day.  The data is piling up that habits are being formed. This has significant implications for companies that want their content or brand to be part of daily consumer routines.

Smart Speaker Owners Listen to Music Frequently

Dashbot also explored what interactions were most common for those daily smart speaker interactions. Music, information and weather led the list as we have often seen in other studies. Even more interesting was the frequency of use question.

We found of respondents who listen to music, almost 63% listen multiple times throughout the day. For those who use their device to ask for information, more than 53% do so multiple times per day.

It is often hard to see how technology is transforming our lives while it is ramping up in terms of adoption. However, voice assistants, particularly through smart speakers, are visibly changing consumer habits right in front of us. I encourage you to read the entire report analysis on Dashbot’s Medium blog post.

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