Understanding the Problem

Our client, Wondery, a premium podcast studio, is under-indexing with Gen Z audiences. Gen Z is one of several new audiences Wondery is trying to reach as part of a new mandate to expand and diversify audiences. This study explores Gen Z podcast listening behaviors and the impact of marketing and design resources required for attracting and retaining Gen Z podcast listeners.

The podcasting industry has a low barrier of entry due to low startup costs compared to other media forms, ease of uploading content, and high demand for a range of topics (Berkeley Economic Review, 2019). It gives rise to competition and increases demand for stand-out content. Presently, about 120 million Americans regularly listen to podcasts. This number is expected to grow to 164 million by 2024 (Tateossian, 2022).

Industry overview

Time frame & Process 

Month 1: Getting to know the Wondery and defining the client's problem, followed by exploratory and academic research to formulate research questions and hypotheses.

Month 2: Designing the research: content analysis, qualitative, and quantitative, recruiting qualified participants for surveys, focus groups, and IDIs.

Month 3: Collecting and analyzing data (sampling and piloting), data visualization, presenting results and making actionable recommendations to the client.

Which social media messaging and user experience would attract and retain Gen Z podcast listeners?

Should Wondery redirect its social media marketing and UX resources to attract and retain Gen Z listeners?

Management Decision Problem

Market Research Problem

Wondery

Wondery


RQ1. Which social media platform should Wondery choose to reach and connect with Gen Z podcast listeners?

RQ2. What kind of podcast-related social media content draws and retains Gen Z listeners?

RQ3. What kind of user experience do Gen Z audiences expect from a podcasting platform?

Research Questions

Research Goal

Goal 1: To determine which social media platforms Gen Z use for podcast recommendations and podcast adoption.

  • Method(s): Qualitative survey

  • Desired sample: 300 Gen Z podcast listeners based in the US (150 casual podcast listeners and 150 heavy podcast listeners)

  • Resources: Qualtrics

  • Distribution: Amazon Mechanical Turk with screening questions about their podcast listening behavior.

  • Survey Design:

    • 20 related to social media platform specific consumption habits

    • Duration of 15-20 minutes per participant

    • A pre-survey screener to collect demographic and psychographic information

Goal 3: To understand user experience attributions for podcasting or audio platforms to acquire and retain Gen Z listeners.

  • Method(s): Interviews (qualitative)

  • Desired sample: 8 Gen Z podcast listeners (4 Wondery users followers and 4 non-Wondery users) 

  • Resources: Zoom and Google docs

  • Distribution: Email

  • Interview Research Design:

    • Observatory research by watching users navigate the Wondery website and asking specific questions about their experience.

    • Duration of 30 minutes per interviewee

    • A pre-interview screener to collect demographic and psychographic information

Goal 2: To determine the performance of Wondery’s current social media content among current and prospective users.

  • Method(s): Social media engagement analysis (quantitative) and interviews (qualitative)

  • Desired sample: 8 Gen Z podcast listeners (4 Wondery social media followers and 4 non-Wondery followers) 

  • Resources: Social Sprout/Hootsuite, Zoom, Google docs

  • Distribution: Social media/Email

  • Interview Research Design:

    • 10-25 questions about specific Wondery social media content and its perception

    • Duration of 30 minutes per interviewee

    • A pre-interview screener to collect demographic and psychographic information

Qualitative Overview

Target demographic has the following attributes: 

  • Gen Z (specifically between 18-24 years old)

  • Diverse through race, gender, and nationality

  • Currently based in the U.S.

  • University students (undergraduate or graduate) or early career professionals

  • Casual (one to two podcasts a month) podcast listeners to avid (more than five podcasts a month) podcast listeners.

Quantitative Overview

View full survey

A. Survey

Participants.

118 participants (57 males and 61 females) were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk for a study with the description “Survey about social media usage and podcast listening behavior,” for which they were paid 5 cents each. Survey participation is limited to participants who were born after 1997 and are currently located in the United States: 56% of participants are aged between 18 to 24, and 46% of participants were aged between 25 to 26. The ethnic composition of the participants is White (65.15%), Hispanic or Latino (11.14%), and Asian-American (7.14%).

Materials and Procedure.

An online survey collected data from Nov. 10th to Nov. 26th, 2022. The survey contained 21 questions (see Appendix A) divided into two sections: podcast experience and social media usage and behavior. The first section, podcast experience, was assessed to understand the past podcast listening behavior of the participants and segment the heavy and casual podcast listener based on their listening frequency. An example question from this section is, "In the past six months, how many times did you listen to podcasts?" The next section examined their social media user behavior and opinion on various advertising tools. An example question from this section was, "In the past six months, how often did you watch podcast-related content on social media platforms (such as Instagram, Youtube, etc.)?" Most questions were multiple choices and text-input fields that aimed to gather definite quantitative and qualitative answers. The remaining questions were answered via a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from "very strongly disagree" to "very strongly agree."

To explore a topic on understanding differences in perspectives among the target audience Gen Z regarding podcasts and their social media habits. Two groups of four participants were recruited to participate in a zoom meeting to provide multi-faceted factors such as motivations, opinions, and behaviors.

The focus group revolved around four topics:

  • Podcast experience

    • Participants often listen to podcasts while doing other tasks, such as driving or walking. Some participants said they use podcasts for educational purposes - they learned some new concepts and garnered knowledge through podcasts.

    • The two purposes for Gen Z when listening to podcasts are entertainment and education.

  • Ads

    • Gen Z prefers social media ads that present an actionable call to action, which attracts them to redirect to podcast page

    • Clickbait topics should appear in titles or themes.

  • Podcast social media page

    • Almost all participants expressed interest in seeing snippets or behind-the-scenes stories

    • Engage with podcast episodes and provide their comments. It is a very effective method of interacting with the audience and creating a channel for getting feedback and comments

  • Influencers

    • Gen Z wants to see more Youtubers, content creators, streamers, or celebrities in podcasts

    • Prefer the conversational aspect of the podcast. The interaction between hosts and good dynamics and conversation will keep the audience engaged


Survey Data Analysis and findings

A series of one-sample t-tests were conducted to determine which recommendation method were considered important by comparing responses to the midpoint neutral value of 3 (See Table 1). All the three features were considered important (friend recommendation, social media recommendation, and official podcast ranking, all p < .001). ​​An series of independent-sample t test was then conducted to evaluate if heavy podcast listeners or casual podcast listeners were more likely to be motivated by these three recommendation method. Although being non-significant (see Table 1), there’s still a tendency for the heavy podcast listener to be more likely to be persuaded by peer recommendation (p = .079), social media recommendation (p = .302), and establish close relationship in this cybernetwork (p = .059), compared with the opposite group.

1

2

Four sets of frequency analysis was conducted to understand GenZ podcast listener’s social media usage and podcast listening behavior. The first frequency analysis was conducted to segements the audience based on their podcast listening frequency. All participants have some experience with podcast. Participants (55.0%) who listened to podcast more than 4 times a week are considered as heavy podcast listener, and the reaiming participants (45.0%) are labeled as casual podcast listener. 

The second set of frequency analysis was conducted to understand the most popular social media platform that GenZ uses to search for podcast recommendation. Analysis revealed that Instagram (60.9%) was the most used social media platform, followed by Youtube (54.5% ) and Facebook (47.3%). As for the group tendency, more heavy podcast listeners are using Twitter (61.0%) and Tiktok(52.5%) to search for podcast recommendation, whereas the causal podcast listeners prefer using Facbook (69.4%) and Youtube(73.5%). 

The third frequency analysis was conducted to understand the preference of listening medium. Surprisingly, around 53% of the respondents selected website as their most preferred listening platform. However, heavy podcast listener are more likely to use mobile (54.2%) to listen to podcast compare with the casual podcast listener (38.8%). 

3

The fourth frequency analysis was aimed to understand GenZ podcast listener’s podcast-related social media interaction. The top three interaction with participant’s preferred podcast are following podcast host or official account on social media (59.3%), searching for podcast related content (49.1%), and rating the podcast (48.1%). Heavy podcast listeners tend to be more actively behave on social media platforms by following not only the podcast host and official accounts, but also participants in fan community activities.

4

Access full Survey Data Analysis and findings

User experience(Retention)

Next Step

Wondery should develop its brand personality and exercises a multi-channel communication strategy on different social media platforms

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