The Big Kahuna, or, Michael Gerber's Second Standard: Who is my customer?

This is the big kahuna. The whole enchilada. The 800# gorilla in the room. Here's what he says on p. 155:

Every business has a Central Demographic Model. That is, a most probable customer. And that customer has a whole set of characteristics through which you can define him--age, sex [we call it gender], income, family status, education, profession, and so forth.

Demographics is the science of marketplace reality. I tells you who your customer is.

I cannot stress more how right Gerber is on this issue. If the customer is king, knowing who the customer is, is paramount.

Of course, we don't think quite this way anymore. What he means by "demographic" is really "customer characteristic." Somebody a long time ago heard the term "demographic" and started it and everybody jumped on the bandwagon. Gerber jumped on the bandwagon.

Demography is the study of the composition of and changes in populations over time. Historical demography, one of the sources of my intellectual property, is the study of those things in the past. Demography is that discipline from which "demographics" became bastardized.

There are only a three real demographic variables: births, deaths, and net migration. Demographers also study age at marriage, age at first birth, fertility, fecundity, as well as all those other things we now call "demographics." But no worries: common parlance now is "demographics" so that's what we use.

But no matter what you call them, the most important thing to understand is who your customer is. If he's 64, married C-level, major corporation executive living in Manhattan, that's one thing. But if she's 25, unmarried with a 10 year old son, living with her ex-boyfriend's parents in a trailer on the outskirts of Aho, Arizona, and working at the local Wal-Mart, it's something different.

What do you think of this? The goal is to produce more skilled entrepreneurs. Does this help? Tell me. Post a comment. I'd like to know. And follow me on Twitter.com

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.