Demographic
Marketers - Demographics
Commonly-used demographics include race,
age, income, disabilities, mobility (in terms of travel time to work
or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership,
employment status, and even location. Demographics refers to selected
population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion
research, or the demographic profiles used in such research.
Distributions of values within a demographic variable, and across households,
are both of interest, as well as trends over time. Demographics are
frequently used in economic and marketing research.
Demographic trends describe
the changes in demographics in a population over time. For example,
the average age of a population may increase. It may decrease as well
as certain restrictions may be in place, for instance like in China
if the population is high.
The term demographics as
a noun is often used erroneously in place of demography, the study of
human population, its structure and change. Although there is no absolute
delineation, demography focuses on population structure, processes and
dynamics, whereas demographics is most often used in the fields of media
studies, advertising, marketing, and polling, and should not be used
interchangeably with the term "demography" or (more broadly) "population
studies".
Demographic Marketers and
other social scientists often group populations into categories based
on demographic variables. Some frequently used demographic variables
are:
Age, Sex / Gender also Race/ Ethnicity.
Marketers typically combine
several variables to define a demographic profile. A demographic profile
(often shortened to "a demographic") provides enough information about
the typical member of this group to create a mental picture of this
hypothetical aggregate. For example, a marketer might speak of the single,
female, middle-class, age 18 to 24 demographic.
Marketing researchers typically
have two objectives in this regard: first to determine what segments
or subgroups exist in the overall population; and secondly to create
a clear and complete picture of the characteristics of a typical member
of each of these segments. Once these profiles are constructed, they
can be used to develop a marketing strategy and marketing plan.
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