••• lifestyle research
Good health makes for a good life
Researcher GfK asked 23,000 consumers online in 17 countries about what factors they personally see as being part of the life they would like to have. Good health was selected by nearly eight out of 10 of respondents, while financial security attracted seven out of 10 and leisure time nearly six-and-a-half out of 10. Over half of people also see a happy marriage, travel for leisure, a home you own and control over one’s life as being part of the good life. And exactly half include having an interesting job.
In contrast, less than half of people include children, spiritual enrichment or a yard and lawn or nice garden. And less than a quarter include really nice clothes, accessories or jewelry, a college education, the latest electronics and gadgets or a luxury or second car.
College education has greater “good life” resonance with younger age groups than older ones. Teenagers lead with 29 percent including this, falling to 26 percent of 20-29-year-olds and 23 percent of those aged in their thirties and forties, with further drops for those in their fifties and sixty-plus.
Good health, financial security and control over one’s own life are most popular among older age groups than younger ones for their vision of a good life. For financial security, this is led by those aged 60 plus, where 78 percent include this, and then falls steadily for each consecutively younger age group, to reach just 64 percent of teenagers.
••• financial services
Consumers ready to say goodbye to passwords
According to a Visa survey of 1,000 Americans, conducted by AYTM Market Research, 86 percent of consumers are interested in using biometrics to verify identity or to make payments and more than 65 percent of consumers are already familiar with biometrics. Seventy percent of consumers believe that biometrics are easier and 46 percent think they are more secure than using passwords or PINs.
Consumers were most familiar with fingerprint recognition, with 30 percent having used it once or twice and another 35 percent using it regularly. By comparison, about 32 percent have used voice recognition in the past and only 9 percent use it regularly. Seventy percent of respondents find biometrics easier than passwords and 61 percent consider it faster. Fewer than a third of consumers use unique passwords for each of their accounts.
Fifty percent of consumers responded that the top benefit of using biometrics is eliminating the need to remember multiple passwords or PINs, followed by 46 percent who said that biometrics is more secure than passwords or PINs for verifying identity. Forty-nine percent are concerned both about the risk of a security breach of sensitive biometric information and that biometric authentication won’t work well or will take multiple tries.