Family Life Cycle

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 497.

1. Bachelor stage: young single individuals

2. Full nest: young married couples with children

a. youngest child under six

b. youngest child six or over

c. older married couples with dependent children

3. Empty nest: older married couples with no children at home

4. Solitary survivors: older single or widowed people

Geographic analysis can reveal striking dissimilarities in consumer attitudes and patterns of consumption. In the United States, surveys show that certain products sell much better in some areas than in others: dinnerware in the Northeast, fishing poles in the Midwest, home freezers in the Southeast, and sleeping bags in the Northwest. Favorite colors vary: blue and white in the Northeast; yellow and orange in the Southeast; yellow, orange, and pink in the West; blue, green, and brown in the Northwest.

Some marketing communicators subscribe to the "heavy-user" theory, which cuts across all three lines of market segmentation. Ac­cording to this theory, a relatively small proportion of consumers use a relatively large proportion of certain products. Advertising aimed to­ward the heavy users is considered unusually efficient. A recent refine­ment of the heavy-user theory is the 80/20% rule. In the United States, researchers have discovered that in several product categories - including dog food, instant coffee, and beer — 20% of the buyers pur­chase 80% of the goods. And 20% of telephone customers make 80% of the calls. The figures are remarkably consistent.

Essential to all of these theories and practices is the marketing concept: marketing, advertising, and merchandising begin and end with the consumer.