A Third Of Consumers Fail To Accurately Recall Their Digital Spending Behavior

Recent research has identified a gap between consumer reporting of digital spending behavior versus what they actually bought.

Research from DISQO reveals that over a third of consumers (38%) incorrectly recall their digital spending habits, which means 62% of consumers could accurately recall their digital spending. Still, the results call "into question the efficacy of making business decisions based on consumers' self-reported behaviors alone."

To determine the gap in consumer memory versus actual spending, DISQO asked 53,749 respondents about shopping behavior over the past 30 days. It then compared their answers to measurements of their actual digital spending habits over the same 30 days.

When consumers were asked whether they were confident about how they reported their spending, 49% reported they were highly confident, 48% reported they were somewhat confident, and 3% reported they had zero confidence in their recall of digital spending.

DISQO was also able to determine differences in memory based on industry, including auto, grocery, and travel. It found that groceries and travel had less difference in consumer memory versus actual spending.

When examining consumer recall of travel-related purchases, only 28% of consumers incorrectly recalled their digital travel purchases within a 30-day period. Only thirty-three percent of consumers incorrectly recalled their digital grocery purchases.

Auto purchases were where consumers had the most difficult time recalling their purchasing, with a little over 50% of consumers unable to correctly recall their digital auto spending habits.

DISQO also found that men had a less accurate recall of their digital spending habits than women. Sixty-two percent of male consumers who responded incorrectly reported their digital spending, and only 38% recalled it correctly. For comparison, fifty-nine percent of women were incorrect or somewhat incorrect.

However, a lot more men reported high confidence in their reporting (58%) compared to 43% of women.