New research from Alcatel-Lucent reveals teens want mobile phone operators to market directly to them

In an on-going effort to understand the user experience, Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced the most recent results from The Worldwide Lab at Alcatel-Lucent, a program designed to understand the preferences of teens and young adults from around the world. The latest results, focused on how this important demographic is using music on their phones, reveal a willingness to purchase mobile content and a desire for a more streamlined, simplified mobile content shopping experience that mirrors other channels.

Teens and young adults have grown up in the Internet age where the brands and content they care about are presented to them in a relevant and compelling way. They shop in person at malls and electronically online, and in both settings, they are used to having messages targeted at them and expect an integrated shopping experience. “Teens are incredibly active on the Web and will demand to be able to do the same types of things on their mobile phones,” said Linda Barrabee, Program Manager at Yankee Group. “This includes the mobile content experience, from discovery to purchase.”

This expectation is strikingly different from today’s mobile experience described by members of the Lab as key program findings reveal.

The current mobile content shopping experience is challenging for teens and young adults and inadequate when compared to similar services at the mall or on the computer.
A need tomake the mobile experience intuitive, easy and fun – much more aligned to the television and computer experience and ensure that formats are compatible with all types of mobile devices.
Young mobile customers are used to having messages targeted at them and expressed significant interest in receiving targeted ads including unsubscribed, personalized advertising and awareness campaigns that deliver relevant content to their mobile devices.
Subscribers continue to be surprised at the lack of visible, relevant brands on their mobiles. They want to be marketed to as they are on the Internet, at the mall and on TV.
All of the Lab members want special offers sent to them.
The Worldwide Lab at Alcatel-Lucent is focused on providing insight into user behaviour that can be used to help its customers improve the user experience across devices, while identifying new revenue generating service opportunities. In this instance, the research focused on mobile communications.

“Mobile operators are looking for the best way to offer mobile content and create a compelling experience, and understanding what mobile phone users want - particularly the target youth demographic - is difficult. The Lab gives Alcatel-Lucent direct insight into the behaviours and expectations of teens, who are not only enthusiastic users of mobile phones but also the primary buyers of mobile content,” said June Bower, Vice President of Consumer and Entertainment Marketing for Alcatel-Lucent. “The findings of this research point us to the real market opportunity. Teens are willing to receive special offers and use their mobile phone to shop if it gives them information about, and access to, the things they want.”

The Lab surveys and results also provide Alcatel-Lucent with critical input to help direct product and feature development. The release of this new end-user survey data coincides with the new release of the Alcatel-Lucent 5965 Mobile Content Platform, a powerful software solution that gives mobile operators the ability to offer a customized mobile content shopping experience. The enhanced product includes several feature enhancements that enable the delivery of content and advertising to subscribers based on personal interests and behaviour, including:

subscriber data collection and integrated marketing to let operators serve relevant content to users;
shopping mall features that allow operators to create a shopping experience that include on and off portal offerings; and
subscriber data collection that tracks behavior on and off portal to allow for relevant advertising to teens who want to be marketed to.