Demographics

the term "Demographics", a corruption of the term "Demographic Characteristics" is pretty much poorly understood in most marketing literature. Take this from Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia:

Demographics or demographic data refers to selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research. Note the distinction from the term "demography" 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. 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.

"Demographics" comes from demography, the study of the composition of and changes in a population. Strictly speaking, there are only 3 demographic variables: birth, death, and net-migration (in-migration less out-migration). These are the only ways that populations change. Most of what is called "demographics" should be called "socioeconomic characteristics.

But, we now have this term and entrepreneurs have to think in terms of the characteristics of the users of their product. But whether you call the characteristics of people "demographic" or "socio-economic", you have to pay attention to them. Are they young, old, etc., rich or poor, healthy or infirm? I saw a note on a door in my 100-year-old father-in-law's apartment that said "Leave the paper in the bag, not on the floor." There was an arrow to a plastic bag hanging from the door knob. I wondered at first why not just pick it up. I quickly realized that the residents probably had a lot of trouble stooping. Duh.

So, is your product designed for elderly? For example, are you marketing a devise that allows elderly users to communicate with emergency services if they've fallen or otherwise are unable to get to the phone? Well, you'd better watch some of them use it so you understand how to make it better suited to people who have more constraints placed on them by their deteriorating physical condition.

What do you think about this? Does this mean anything to you? I'd like to know. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. It supplies the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.