Garmin Loyalty hits 73%

Garmin Loyalty is high but awareness lags significantly behind Apple

A recent wearables survey by Statista of 840-1200 American respondents produced some interesting results.

When asked the question, “Which of the following wearables brands are you likely to use again in the future?” Garmin scored a creditable 73% but that lags way behind Apple. Perhaps Apple’s lead with this KPI is to be expected but I wouldn’t have expected Garmin to lag behind OPPO, Huawei, Realme, Honor and other ‘lesser’ brands.

If you turn the stats around, Garmin will lose 1 in 4 customers whereas Apple will lose 1 in 10 customers. That doesn’t make too much difference in the short term but has a significant compounding effect into the medium term and beyond.

 

garmin brand loyalty

When respondents were then asked, “Which of the following wearables brands have you used in the past 12 months?” only 13% of Garmin owners said they had used their device in the last year. Put another way, 8 out of 9 Garmin owners don’t use their expensive devices. Apple scored 39%, a figure twice as good as its closest rival on this measure, Samsung.

 

garmin usage

Next, Garmin’s brand awareness comes in at 57% which is perhaps not as high at a population level as you’d expect. However, I’m sure in terms of sports awareness, the figure would be higher, but then how much of Garmin’s smart/wellness business (Venu, vivoactive) falls under population-wide stats and hence must be competing badly with Apple?

garmin awarenessIf we now turn to some of the details behind what people think of Garmin, the buzz around the brand is relatively low, suggesting a need for more engaging marketing efforts to stir consumer interest and chatter.

 

 

The next insight into Garmin users (us!) suggests that we’re not as bothered about a happy relationship as other people but are disproportionately more interested in advancing our careers. We’re honest, like to make our own decisions, and want to have a good time but are perhaps less than normally bothered about societal traditions.

 

One final takeout from Statista was that

 

Garmin enjoys the highest awareness among Baby Boomers, followed by Millennials. However, all other brand KPIs follow a different pattern. The brand resonates best with the older generations like Baby Boomers and Generation X, while the youngest generations in our survey leave room for improvement. Gen Z scores lowest in our popularity, usage, loyalty, and media buzz metrics.

 

Take Out

I’m not entirely sure if I feel uplifted or disappointed by that.

I think it’s easy to pick fault in the questions but the sample sizes are decent and must be representative to some degree. The brand usage stat (1 in 9) was the most shocking to me

 

 

Source: statista via Gadgets and Wearables

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9 thoughts on “Garmin Loyalty hits 73%

  1. I’d have moderate doubts about any study where a question asked about “Adidas Wearable” usage in the past year, and it somehow ranks in the top 3. Adidas hasn’t released a wearable in nearly a decade now.

  2. Pretty dumb to compare a sports accesories company to apple samsung and oppo. Go ask enduro sports athletes the same question and these brands wont show up.

    1. point taken, they had to draw the line somewhere and that was at a brand level. garmin definitely has pretentions as a smart/wellness company as well as a sports tech company. The delimitations of all these markets blur and overlap.

  3. And how do you define enduro folks? The crowd who goes on 45 minute run every odd sunday or the ultra crowd?

    I don’t think including these brands is dumb when you see all the ads media about wellbeing, fitness, work life balance, stress and what not. From the amount of chatter about those I would assume that they are mainstream topics.

    And that’s a, or rather, the market.

    Like way bigger than some endurance sports nuts. Sure that’s booming as well (or was? or is it still?) but I’d guess that more people pick up a watch gadget with fitness and wellbeing stuff than than people picking up ironman length triathlons and the corresponding watch. Just a guess though.

    So the real question is where that will leave people like us in the future that want SPORTS watches and not another smartphone for your wrist.

    1. “the real question is where that will leave people like us in the future that want SPORTS watches”

      once the mainstream brands take over mass market sport, there will initially only be sapce for Garmin as a niche provider to people like us.
      Eventually, Garmin goes as well as we are not a big enough market to sustain its current business model – ie a UNIQUELY high number of features and high prices.

      but maybe the definition of a sports watch changes. if all/most watches can do sports stuff really well then why do you need a sports watch? surely you just need a sporty variant of a regular smartwatch…kinda like the Apple Watch Ultra 6.

      [I’ve been saying versions of this for several years now, I’m still hoping and waiting for someone to tell me I’m wrong and for me not to have a comeback. I hope I’m wrong]

  4. That “usage in last year” number looked fishy even before Ray shared the Adidas detail. Maybe something about the filters and semantics in the study design that lumps everybody who ever had a Garmin in their car with “Garmin owners” and Adidas being a messup between fashion and “wearable technology” where the technology bit is usually dropped.

    With a bit of second-hand knowledge about this kind of brand awareness monitoring, I suspect that they synthesized results from separate monitor studies specific to markets that are definitely not sports wearables (fashion, smartphones and car electronics perhaps?) into one that claims to observe the small market where all those brands intersect. If you squint very hard and focus on the handwaving.

  5. I’m always amazed by how many casual runners/bikers etc use Garmin’s. I’ve used most brands over the last 15+ years but hadn’t used Garmin in maybe 10 years. I got an Instinct 2 and was horrified. The usability is terrible. Both the watch and the app are a total mess. The UP button is in the middle and SELECT is at the top? Really? There are at least three different menus accessed by various long presses? And this is my “thing”. I’m a gadget freak ultra runner. If I find it a confusing mess, how does a normal, casual, weekend runner ever use one of these things? I’m actually amazed brand loyalty is as high as it is.

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