Companies That Force Employees To Use BlackBerries May Be Hurting Brand Loyatly

September 23, 2010 – Mountain View, CA – Companies that force employees to use BlackBerries may be indirectly hurting the brand by fomenting low user loyalty, according to the latest Crowd Science (http://www.crowdscience.com) study into smartphone brand loyalty.

Only 35% of survey respondents whose smartphone choices were foisted on them by corporate mandate said they were “very satisfied” with their brand, compared with about 60% of users who exercised at least some choice in their smartphone purchases.

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BlackBerries were much more likely – in 2 out of 3 cases – to be the smartphone brand chosen by companies for their employees, the study found. About one-fifth (19%) of BlackBerry users had their phone chosen for them, compared with just 4% each of Android or iPhone users. In a related finding, Crowd Science found that one-third of BlackBerry owners use their phones mostly or only for business purposes, compared with just 20% of all smartphone users.

“Combine the low satisfaction levels of users of corporate-mandated smartphones with the fact that there is a high proportion of these among BlackBerry owners, and you’ve got a key factor in the low overall loyalty we’ve seen in BlackBerry users for the past year,” noted Sandra Marshall, Crowd Science VP of Research.

Consistent with the findings of the earlier Crowd Science smartphone studies, only 45% of all BlackBerry users said they were “very satisfied” with their phones –compared with 71% of iPhone users and 70% of Android users. Only 30% of all BlackBerry users would buy another BlackBerry for their next phone, while 70% of iPhone and Android users would stick with their current brands, Crowd Science found. In a further blow to BlackBerry, of the overall sample – more than half of whom still use a regular cell phone – 30% said their next phone would be an iPhone, 20% and Android, 20% a regular cell phone, and just 10% a BlackBerry. Only a sparse minority of iPhone users (6%) and Android users (3%) would buy a BlackBerry the next time around, while significantly larger proportions of BlackBerry users would defect to an iPhone (31%) or an Android (23%).

In addition to the greater use of BlackBerries for business, Crowd Science found that BlackBerry users skew somewhat older than iPhone uses, but all smartphone brands break down similarly along gender lines. These most recent survey findings from Crowd Science were gathered from a random sample of 2,423 online visitors between August 25-September 7, 2010, and are the first in a new online opinion research program called Just Ask! “We’re excited to launch Just Ask!”, said Corey Leibow, Crowd Science CEO. “We think more online market research benefits everyone, and Just Ask! showcases the fact that in spite of all the technological advances in web analytics and behavioral analysis, the added dimension of survey-based research is essential to really understanding people’s attitudes and opinions”, added Leibow.

Complete results of the smartphone brand loyalty study will be reviewed in a free webinar hosted by Sandra Marshall, VP of Research for Crowd Science, Wednesday, September 29 at 10:30 PDT/1:30 EDT. To register for the webinar, Twitter

About Crowd Science

Crowd Science (www.crowdscience.com), based in Mountain View, CA with offices in Toronto and Sydney provides online market research applications that combine the benefits of web analytics and survey research in a single research platform. This innovative approach enables easier, faster, and more accurate online research results via low-overhead, turnkey research apps, opening up a new world of research possibilities. Crowd Science’s growing suite of products includes Audience Profiler, which lets website publishers better understand their audiences, and Campaign Profiler, an online ad effectiveness solution. Both are based on Crowd Science’s proprietary SmartSample™ methodology. Crowd Science is helping publishers, brands, agencies, and ad networks generate better insights that increase ad sales, inform editorial decisions, and demonstrate the ROI of marketing programs. Crowd Science’s market research technology has been deployed on over 4,000 web sites. Clients include Everyday Health, Federated Media, HalogenNetwork, Meredith, and Turner Sports and Entertainment.

About Just Ask!Just Ask! is Crowd Science’s online opinion research program that delivers timely, topical insights on online attitudes and opinions. Just Ask! surveys will be conducted on an ongoing basis covering diverse, relevant topics including mobile and social network usage, online shopping attitudes, and brand perception. Just Ask! utilizes Crowd Science’s research platform and proprietary SmartSample methodology, and collects survey responses from a random sample of visitors across a network of over 4,000 websites.

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