Pi-Consulting

Nearly all forms of market and media research gather the basic demographic facts about their respondents. These typically cover gender, age, marital status, geographic location, housing type, education, income, socio-economic grouping etc. These basic facts are a rich source of insight in themselves, and give essential context to any attitudinal and values-based information gathered from the same respondents.

Used by themselves, demographic facts can tell much of the story, particularly if they are assembled in typologies examining socio-economic groupings, housing types, life-stages etc. They give a good basic picture of the “who, what, where and when”, and form an essential first step in target group definition, whether in communication development or media planning.
Demographics care, however, inherently limited and limiting. They give the “who, what, where and when”, but no “why”. Any conjectures about how particular demos “tick” in terms of attitudes is likely to trap us into stereotyping, i.e. older people are “resigned” while younger people are “fun-loving”. These stereotypes often turn out to be plain wrong. Demographic analysis in the absence of any other data will always tend to obscure disparate attitudes within a given group. Demographics also tend to be static in nature, and to reveal important market shifts only when they have already happened.