Component Audio: Who’s Interested, And Why

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 5/3/2010

ALPHARETTA, GA. — About 35 percent of households say they definitely will purchase or are likely to purchase one or more home audio components in the next year, and the top three reasons they gave are to improve the quality of music playback, replace older components, and add surround sound to their video experience, MarketSource found.

MarketSource, a market research company and provider of integrated sales and market services, conducted the nationwide online survey exclusively for TWICE. The company compiled responses from 387 adults, yielding a sample size considered statistically robust to provide a significance level of +5 at a 95 percent confidence interval, MarketSource said.

All told, 12 percent of surveyed adults said they would defi nitely purchase one or more audio components, while 23 percent said they are likely to purchase. A total of 40 percent said they are neither likely nor unlikely; 33 percent are definitely unlikely to purchase; and 22 percent will definitely not purchase.

The survey also found that:
• consumers who are likely or definitely planning to buy an audio component in the next year are more likely to buy speakers than any other type of component;
• a majority of households surveyed own some type of audio component;
• cost is the reason cited by a plurality of non-owners for not considering a component purchase, but current ownership of tabletop stereo systems and iPod-docking speaker systems was also cited; and
• consumers are far more interested in buying some type of audio product that distributes music to multiple rooms of the house than they are in buying audio components in general.