Key Insights Into the US & Norwegian E-Scooter Industry

Electric scooters are an increasingly common sight on the sidewalks of many city centers these days — and it’s not surprising in the least. A subsection of the micromobility industry, electric scooters provide commuters with a fast and eco-friendly way to get around, which translates to many people not being quite as reliant on cars or public transport.

Over the last few years, the demand for electric scooters has seen a steep increase — and demand will continue to grow over the next decade. When the global electric scooter market was valued in 2021, the valuation came in at a healthy $20.78 billion. What’s more, this is forecast to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 7.8% between now and 2030.

To be fair, the general public is a lot more concerned with sustainability than they were over the past few decades, so this growth isn’t all that surprising. Many modern consumers are happy to make changes to their lifestyle to help the planet — and if that means whizzing around using electric scooter sharing services, then so be it!

It also helps that many consumers’ living spaces are becoming quite cramped. As cities increase in population and living spaces become smaller, a compact scooter that requires much less storage space than a car (and even a bike) could easily become a commuter’s best friend.

Of course, we’re aware these aren’t necessarily new concepts for most marketing managers. In fact, most electric scooter users are probably well aware of them, as well. But we do have one trick up our sleeve — we know exactly how top brands in the market are performing in the US and Germany.

In order to take a deeper look into brand awareness, we asked consumers in the US how aware they are of some top electric scooter brands and if they would consider using them. We also conducted similar research in Norway to see how top European scooter brands are faring.

Here’s what we found.

The Results Are In: US

First, let’s take a look at the results from the US. We’ll start with brand awareness for some of the market's major players.

Brand Awareness

The brands we used for the US survey were Spin, Bird, Lime, Lyft, Scoot, and Skip. We began by asking the following brand awareness question: “Of the following brands, which ones have you heard of?” The results can be seen in the chart below.

Looking at the above data, the majority (68%) of consumers have heard of Lyft, while Lime took second place with 24%. 17% of respondents knew of Bird and 16% were aware of Scoot. Trailing at the bottom of the pack, Spin and Skip came in at 8% and 6%, respectively.

Interestingly, we saw increases in brand awareness as income increased for participants — information that should be very interesting for brands when defining their target audience. So, let's explore the income demographic to see how different audiences feel about the chosen scooter brands.

When we take a closer look at whether an individual’s income had any influence over their awareness of electric scooter brands, we found that those with higher incomes had slightly different results than the general population, as seen below.

With this audience, most of the brands saw an increase in their awareness, but Lyft still stormed ahead with 77%. Lime saw a 2% increase to 26%, Bird remained at 17%, and 18% of higher-earning respondents had heard of Scoot — which is a 1% increase. However, Spin and Skip saw no change in their awareness levels with this audience.

However, when we look at the results of those with low-income levels, Lyft takes a bit of a tumble to 58%, as seen in the below chart. Comparatively, only 21% knew about Lime and 17% had heard of both Scoot and Bird. Once again taking the bottom positions, Spin and Skip still came in with 8% and 6%, respectively.

An important insight to take from these results? Apart from Lyft and Lime, most of the brands remain at the same level of awareness. We can thus ascertain that Lyft and Lime are more well-known by respondents with higher incomes.

A possible reason for this could be the kinds of publications the brands are using for press releases. Both Lift and Lime have earned press coverage from publications such as The Standard and the Daily Mail — both of which are known to middle-class audiences, which usually indicates higher earners.

If any of the remaining brands wanted to try out this strategy, they could focus their PR strategies on getting into publications that are read by middle-class audiences with high incomes.

Brand Consideration

Just because someone is aware of a brand, doesn’t necessarily mean that they’d consider using it. That’s why brand consideration is such an important KPI to track — it reveals what percentage of your aware audience is actually interested in your product and/or services.

We were interested to see if brand consideration levels differed greatly from brand awareness levels — so, we delved into the brands’ consideration results from our survey, which can be seen in the chart below.

When asked if they would consider using any of the chosen brands, 48.3% reported consideration for Lyft and 13.9% for Lime. Next came Bird with 11.7% consideration, followed by Scoot with 9.9%. Both Spin and Skip remained at the bottom of the pack with 4% and 3% consideration, respectively.

This data continues to show how much Lyft is dominating the market in the US — with no other brand really coming close to its consideration levels. Lime and Bird did earn lower consideration when compared to Lyft but did quite well overall.

Once again, we broke down the results by respondents’ income levels. Of the higher earners, 79% said they’d consider Lyft, and Bird still took second place with 68%. Scoot was only just behind at 62%. When it comes to the final three, 58% would opt for Lime, and half of the respondents answered with Spin and Skip.

As with the brand awareness results, at 60.8%, Lyft is very much the brand of choice for consumers with high incomes. When it comes to the other brands, their consideration levels were almost exactly the same as the results from the general population — with small increases for Lime and Scoot.

To give a bit of context to these results, before branching out into electric scooters, Lyft was a well-established ride-share app in the US. As individuals with high incomes tend to travel more than those with lower incomes, there’s a chance that they were already aware of the brand from their previous travels. If so, this could have reinforced Lyft as a brand that could be trusted and relied on.

Finally, it’s time to take a look at the results from the low-income respondents, as seen below.

When asked if they would consider using any of the chosen brands, Lyft remains in first place with 37.7%. A good deal behind our top brand, Lime comes in with brand consideration of 12.2%, while Bird earned 11.7%. Finally, Spin and Skip remained at 4% and 3%, respectively.

Considering all our results, it seems that there is only ever a significant shift in the results and it’s in the high-income demographic. With the general public and low-income respondents, there isn’t much change.

The Results Are In: Oslo, Norway

In this section, we’ll take a look at a handful of electric scooter brands that are making their mark in the European market — specifically in Oslo, Norway. We’ll start with brand awareness for the general population.

Brand Awareness

For Norway, we gathered data on the following e-scooter brands: Bird, Bolt, Lime, and dott. Below you will see our findings for brand awareness in the general population.

As we can see, American brand Lime comes in first at 16.5% brand awareness — followed by Bolt at 14.8%. Bird and dott bring up the rear at 10.1% and 9.8%, respectively.

It’s quite impressive that, as an American brand, Lime comes in first — beating out the likes of Estonian brand Bolt and Dutch brand dott.

As with the data from the US, we wanted to see if an important demographic like income level made a difference in consumers’ awareness levels of the chosen brands. Below, you’ll see the data for high-income Norwegian consumers.

As we can see, each brand saw an increase in brand awareness for high-income consumers — with Bolt showing a 43% increase. While Bolt takes first place with this audience, it does seem to have stronger competition to deal with.

But does this change when we consider the brand awareness levels for low-income Norwegian consumers? Let’s see.

Considering the above data, most brands saw a small decrease in awareness. However, both Bird and dott saw an increase. Compared to high-income consumers, low-income consumers are 6.8% more aware of Bird. Similarly, low-income consumers are 13% more aware of dott.

Perhaps the marketing materials of Bird and dott resonate better with low-income consumers. Or maybe the places that Bird and dott choose to advertise are seen by more low-income consumers? It’s hard to say exactly why the level of awareness are what they are, but there’s sure to be a reason.

Brand Consideration

Next, let’s look at brand consideration for the chosen brands in Norway. Let’s begin with the general population.

Considering the above chart, Lime still holds onto the top spot quite soundly.

The remaining brands all report similar consideration levels, meaning that there’s room to grow. Next, let’s take a look at the data with regard to income levels.

For consumers with high incomes, Lime remains in the first position, followed by Bolt and then Bird. Of all the brands, Bolt actually saw the biggest increase at 51% — meaning other brands should keep an eye out for this competitor, as it has the potential to knock them off their pedestals.

Interestingly, when compared to the population, each brand saw an increase in brand consideration with one exception: dott. Perhaps dott’s branding and marketing efforts aren’t connecting as well with high-income consumers in Norway?

Finally, we’ll take a look at the brand consideration levels for low-income consumers in Norway.

While Lime and Bolt remain in the top two spots, a trend from earlier reemerges: Bird and dott not only hold higher brand awareness with low-income consumers but also higher brand consideration levels.

Clearly, Bird and dott are connecting well with this demographic. Now, whether that is their target demographic or not, we can’t say. But the brands would be smart to keep this data in mind when moving forward.

Final Thoughts

E-scooter brands may be popping up left and right these days, but our data proves that there are some clear frontrunners in big markets like the US and Norway. While they aren’t the same country to country, some brands have been able to establish fairly strong international presences — like Lime.

Still, the e-scooter market is relatively new, and there’s a great deal of room for these brands to grow and expand over time. Just because a brand is a frontrunner today doesn’t guarantee its success tomorrow.

That’s why brands such as these should use brand monitoring software. With access to reliable, up-to-date insights on their own brand and that of the competition, a brand tracking tool like Latana allows marketing managers to make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Updated by: Cory Schröder on 19.08.22