To boost customer engagement and increase smart home technology adoption in your territory, we conducted the E Source Smart Home Consumer Survey in the fall of 2020. We gathered information from US homeowners and renters in single-family and multiunit dwellings to help you design scalable, effective smart home pilots and programs and promote them.
We explored:
- Ownership and interest in smart home technologies
- Features and benefits of smart home systems
- Expected utility bill savings
- Data privacy and security concerns
What you get
If you’re an E Source member, you’ll get access to reports and webinars featuring data from the Smart Home Consumer Survey. Your access is limited to the services your utility subscribes to. If you’re interested in receiving a specific report, but your utility doesn’t subscribe to the E Source service that hosts that content, please contact us.
- Are your smart thermostat DR programs taking customers by surprise? Trust-building communication strategies. Smart thermostat demand-response (DR) programs have been around for years, so why are so many customers being taken by surprise? To help solve this problem, we pulled together three communication tips to maintain customer trust and share them in this blog post.
- Building a customer-focused smart home strategy (for members of the E Source Technology Assessment Service, Residential Marketing Service, or Demand-Side Management Service). In this webinar, which you can access on demand, we discussed our latest research into the energy and demand benefits that smart home devices and platforms can offer. We shared 2020 E Source data on customer opinions and how utilities can better promote smart home technology.
- US utility customers’ preferences for smart home technologies (for members of the Technology Assessment Service). In 2020, we surveyed 2,000 US residential customers about their preferences and concerns about smart home technologies. We explore some of the top findings to help you design scalable, effective smart home pilots and programs.
- The essentials for marketing the smart home (for members of the E Source Residential Marketing Service). This report explores which customers are most likely to buy smart home technologies; what drives their purchases; how utilities are integrating smart home technologies into their demand-side management programs; and how utilities are marketing smart home devices.
Methodology
The 2020 study provides insights into residential customers’ interests in smart home technologies. We included questions on the technologies they own or plan to purchase, device features and benefits, and security concerns.
We conducted this research in partnership with GreenMarbles, a smart home solutions provider. To recruit participants, we purchased a US residential household sample from Dynata, a global online market research firm. Conducted in October 2020, the survey had 2,003 respondents.
We set quotas for gender, age, income, and geographic location. And we applied a postfieldwork weighting scheme using geographic and demographic data to make sure responses were representative of the US population. In general, a sample size of 2,000 completed surveys yields a margin of error of about ±2% at the 95% confidence level. When looking at a subgroup of responses, the margin of error increases.
Study results
Data from this survey is ready for you! Please submit an Ask E Source inquiry with your smart home technology questions. We’ll get you answers that are relevant to your service territory.