Subject: Apple Watch Study 2015

Do Men and Women 'Think Different' About Wearable Tech?

The “CrowdFlower Apple Watch Social Data Study " found that, contrary to expectations, the watch actually scored a higher approval rating among women than it did among men.

To produce these findings, CrowdFlower — a data enrichment platform that collects, cleans, and labels big data sets — analyzed more than 30,000 individual tweets about the Apple Watch since its launch on April 24.  By using people rather than an algorithm to parse their data, their platform enables them to create a more nuanced, emotionally intelligent big picture. They can then use this data to help clients––like Apple––better understand how to market a product to the public.

Findings:

>> WOMEN WERE MORE ENTHUSED THAN MEN

At launch, 64% of women expressed positive feelings toward the smart watch, while men are less excited at a 53% overall approval rating.

>> BUT MEN WOULDN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT IT

While women who tweeted about the watch were generally more enthusiastic, far fewer women tweeted about it to begin with. 70% of all tweets, whether positive, negative, or neutral, came from men.

This would seem to indicate that the watch has a significant untapped market of female potential buyers, but missed the mark somehow; a recent study by the NPD group determined that 58% of potential buyers of wearable tech are women.

In response to this data, Apple execs clearly chose to target women in the majority of their advertising. Recently, the Apple Watch graced the covers of Self and Vogue China, and US Vogue devoted twelve pages of print ads to the gadget.

Even before the ads hit newsstands, women's interest in the Apple Watch outpaced their male counterparts'.

>>WOMEN'S APPROVAL RATINGS HIGHER EVEN BEFORE FASHION MAG SPREAD

Following the initial announcement, 74% of women and over 56% of men were excited and intended to purchase the watch.

>> 'VARIETY OF APPS' IS MOST-LOVED FEATURE

It may be that overall, women were more pleased with the functionality, but more put off by the design.

The most-loved element of the Watch was the variety of apps, which were cited 56% of the time when discussing its positive features. Specifically, Apple Watch owners tweeted in large numbers that the “health and fitness apps” are very useful and accurate.

Women's positive feelings were even *more* focused on the apps than our overall sample. 62% of women cited apps when they delivered positive opinions, whereas only 26% named design.

In contrast, 15% of those who tweeted negative opinions of the watch cited bad design as a core problem.

Additionally, for more details about the study methodology and results — including how CrowdFlower enables real-time sentiment analysis by cleaning and enriching big data sets — please see the official blog post:

http://www.crowdflower.com/blog/apple-watch