Results of Powermeter survey

Because I was interested in some aspects of training and racing with a powermeter I made a small questionnaire in Survey Monkey. It’s a freemium survey site. Free are 10 questions and max 100 respondents. After a reminder I decided to collect the data (that is I typed all the answers in Excel (you can get a datadump from Survey Monkey, but you have to pay for that and I was not willing to do that;).

 

OK. How did I get the sample? Basically I posted the request to fill in the survey on some Dutch forum sites. One was Fiets which is a Dutch cycling magazine, but which has a forum on various topics like Food and Training, Equipment, you name it. Another one was wielerfanaat.nl. (various news topics on cycling) and on wijntoerist.nl (a cyclosportive (forum) site also. I finally –after a few weeks- also posted it on a Belgian site (also cyclosportive related), but I only got a few responses from there. So you can say the sample consists of ‘engaged’ cyclists, that is, they look –maybe post- on forums.

I was hoping to get 100 respondents, but after a reminder on the forums and 4 weeks after placement I just decided to get the data and analyse it. After monitoring the results I had seen that things tend to be rather stable and on the whole did go in a certain direction without an exact number. The sample in total consisted of 43 respondents. So take that into account when seeing some percentages below (1 difference is 2,3%).

Sample characteristics

Since I only had a limited amount of questions I could as I decided to ask as little background as possible. 57% of respondents were under 35 yrs old, rest above.

 

As could be expected the majority of respondents were ‘quite fanatic’ in a sense that they are related to riding races (in cats) or trying to be competitive in cyclosportives (to obtain highest rank as possible). The ‘None’ applicable were I think riding mountainbikes or triathletes, I am not sure.

 

The sample consisted of 25 (58%) of people who didn’t own a powermeter and 18 (42%) who did.

No powermeter

Of the people who did not own a powermeter (25 people, 1 person=4%) 24% is not planning to buy one coming year, 44% is thinking about buying one, 24% is probably going to buy one coming year and 8% was at the point of buying one. So the majority had a current interest, but each was at a slightly different stage of consideration.

I had a small battery of statements which you can see below.

 

 

92% (Top 2 Box) thinks training with a powermeter will increase their performance. Majority does not really know whether to doubt the quality of lower priced powermeters;60% nor agree / nor disagree. If the price is more attractive they would buy one (96% Top 2 Box). Hiring a powermeter does not seem to be an option, buying seems preferred although there are mixed emotions about hiring before buying (approx. 50/50). Hiring could be a step up before buying.

Powermeter owners

Rider who owned a powermeter (18) owned it (83%) a short time, namely 0-2 years. Powertap (32%) and Power2max (37%) were mostly used. Rest were SRM, Rotor, Quarq/SRAM and I had two persons who (also) ha(s)(d) a PowerCal and 1 Ibike. Given the combination of brands one person had I suspect an importer of the specific brands to be a respondent…………….busted?

82% analyses his/her results several times a week. A few had a coach/someone else to do it. Also here I had a battery of statements.

 

82% says that training with a powermeter has increased their performance. There also seems some tendency that making a trainingschedule based on power isn’t perceived as easy, although the majority (76% Top 2 Box) says to be familiar with the concepts of training with a powermeter and 76% Top 2 Box is self-learned. They also visit internetsites to read about it (82%) and own one of more books (82%).

In general there seems to be a large part which have the idea they do not get everything out of their powermeter data, they only use a part of the data. They also seem to be willing to invest (a small amount) in a third party to get more out of their data.

76% expects the powermeter market to grow (Top 2 Box) and also the majority (76%) uses heart rate numbers in their analyses next to the power numbers.

Price perception

Non powermeter owners were asked the van Westendorp price Sensitivity meter. You can find more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Westendorp's_Price_Sensitivity_Meter

Normally you can identify 4 points were lines intersect:

*  "too cheap" and "expensive" can be considered the lower bound of an acceptable price range (aka point of marginal cheapness or PMC)

* "too expensive" and "cheap" can be considered as the upper bound of an acceptable price range. This is also called the "point of marginal expensiveness" or PME.

* "expensive" line crosses the "cheap" line. This can be  described as the "indifference price point" or IPP.

* "too cheap" and "too expensive" lines represents an "optimal price point" or OPP. Here an equal number of respondents describe the price as exceeding either their upper or lower limits.

Below you can see the graph:

 

 

PMC and OPP are both at 500 euro. IPP is at 650 euro and PME very close 700 euro. So instead of 4 different intersections we see only 3. This of course has to do with a relatively small sample, but also because in this case respondents often responded the same price for expensive as too expensive.

The acceptable price range is between the PMC and PME which seems from 500 to 700 euro. Now, are these numbers exact? No of course not, but around 700 euro (to approx. 800) seems an upper limit, whereas somewhat below 500 seems the lower limit. Powertap and Stages are the meters at the moment who are around the upper range in that instance and considering only the price seem to have a strong case. Again I stated it on the Wattage Forum as well, great move of them to sponsor Sky (but, that's off topic here now...)

If you have more respondents you will be able to segment more, but unfortunately I can’t. I do feel however that what was found in this respect does give a good direction.

Well, that’s it. If you have questions, remarks, or whatsoever don’t hesitate to e-mail me or to leave a reply on the blog.