New York SBDC Research Network

Obtained from:   Ma rketingProfs Which types of content do consumers of various ages want to see more of from brands? Do some content formats resonate more with certain age groups? To find out,  HubSpot  surveyed 3,010 consumers age 18 and older in Colombia, Germany, Mexico, and the United States. More than half of  surveyed  consumers age 54 and younger want to see more videos from brands they support. Some 47% of consumers age 55+ also want to see more videos from brands they support. There are significant differences in the preferences of various age groups for other content types. Only 22% of consumers age 18-24 value emails from brands they support, compared with 68% of consumers age 55+.

 Obtained From: MarketingProfs When planning a website for your business, half the battle is won if you can successfully identify your target audience : You can better customize your website to meet your audience's needs when you have a clear idea of who your prospective consumers are. But what do those visitors want, exactly, and how do those wants differ by age? In its infographic on generational marketing, custom writing service Handmadewritings examines what online content different age groups prefer . The graphic is based on several research reports and studies, and it offers insights that you might consider factoring into your marketing strategies and analysis as you plan efforts to reach the six major consumer generations in the US. To learn more about the various generations and understand where you might need to tweak your website and content to attract more visitors and improve customer engagement, check out the graphic.

Cornell Program on Applied Demographics has updated the series of county profiles it published a few years ago. PAD got many requests for an update and finally, it is here. This update consists mainly of updated data, but also includes some changes in charts and tables. PAD also decided to concentrate on Demographic, Social and Economic data in this update and not update the agricultural and related data that was in the 2013 version. The updated profiles can be found here .

Who doesn’t love a good deal when online shopping? Pretty much everyone. But not all offers are created equal, and in July 2014 polling by Retention Science, percentage discounts led the pack as the most effective customer incentive. Among US online retailers, 30.9% said a percentage discount was the most effective customer incentive, the No. 1 response. Meanwhile, 21.8% cited shipping incentives—free or discounted—as offers that worked best for their customers. Though percentage discounts were the favorite, amount discounts weren't very popular... However, a Q2 2014 study by Flagship Research for BlueHornet found age played a big role in whether US internet users preferred a percentage discount vs. free shipping. Consumers ages 18 to 45 favored discounts, while 46- to 75-year-olds preferred free shipping — indeed, shipping costs are a top digital shopping pet peeve for older generations. See more at eMarketer .

This report from the Pew Hispanic Center analyzes labor market trends in the economic recovery from 2009 to 2011. The focus is on the change in employment by race, ethnicity, gender and nativity. The data for this report are derived from the Current Population Survey, a monthly survey of about 55,000 households conducted jointly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Data from three monthly surveys were combined to create larger sample sizes for individual groups of workers.

City-Data.com is a useful website that has collected and analyzed data from numerous sources to create as complete and interesting profiles of all U.S. cities as possible. The website has over 74,000 city photos not found anywhere else, graphs of latest real estate prices and sales trends, recent home sales, home value estimator, hundreds of thousands of maps, satellite photos, stats about residents (race, income, ancestries, education, employment...), geographical data, state profiles, crime data, registered sex offenders, cost of living, housing, religions, businesses, local news links based on their exclusive technology, birthplaces of famous people, political contributions, city government finances and employment, weather, tornadoes, earthquakes, hospitals, schools, libraries, houses, airports, radio and TV stations, zip codes, area codes, air pollution, latest unemployment data, time zones, water systems and their health and monitoring violations, comparisons to averages, local ...

Want to know more about the spending habits of your neighbors? Check out Bundle.com . There are lots of forums and articles about spending topics, and you can take a quiz which will assign you a “spend type” based on your usual spending tendencies. For our purposes, I think Everybody’s Money , a database on spending and saving trends, is more interesting. You can choose a location and see spending breakdowns. There are broad categories (like Health & Family) which you can then breakdown into smaller categories (like personal care, insurance, and pets). You can compare this data to other geographies, or compare within categories like age, household type or income. According to their FAQ: “Our data comes from the U.S. government, from anonymous and aggregated spending transactions from Citi , and from third party data providers.” This data shouldn't’t replace the more detailed consumer expenditure reports we can access from DemographicsNow , but it does seem to be an interesting ...

Remember the intern at Morgan Stanley who shocked his bosses when he reported that he and his peers weren't all that into Twitter ? According to a recent New York Times article, he seems to be correct about teens and Twitter. " Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teens " examines the demographics of Twitter users, and argues that technological tools can succeed, even without the trendsetting prowess of the teen crowd. It's a good lesson - not every online tool needs to be marketed to the under-18 crowd, after all they are notoriously fickle, and some applications are just better suited to adults.

comScore describes itself as "a global leader in measuring the digital world and the preferred source of digital marketing intelligence". I'm fond of their "press releases" page, as it provides links to brief articles featuring measurements of users of the Internet from countries around the globe. In the past, I came to rely on sites like this, only to see them stop publication of material without any warning. I'll keep my eye on this one, as it seems pretty hip. Pass it on to your e-clients, too.

A few weeks ago, just before the annual Staff Training, we in the library lost access to a great database that enabled us to manipulate all kinds of demographic data, with a great deal of geographic precision. Many of you had been recipients of the data that it contains. Good news, then. As of last Wednesday, we re-subscribed with the publisher of this database. Of particular relevance is the ability to draw a radius around a specific address (either a given mileage, or driving time). Within that radius, you can then get detailed population demographics, as well as annual expenditures on a wide variety of products and services. So, if you're looking for annual household spending on, say, restaurants within a 15-minute drive of your client's proposed location, then we now have the resource to provide that information. Very cool!

There's been a lot of discussion about the Wii in the office lately (Congratulations to Erin, Camille, Molly and Alexis on their special Christmas gifts!), and it's not just about video game fans under the age of 18. Intuitively, we know that " Older folks like Wii , PCs and cellphones, too ," but now there's more evidence to support that fact. This article discusses Wii bowling leagues happening within retirement communities, but it also cites a Forrester report, revealing that "U.S. adults 64 and older who bought technology in a recent three-month period spent an average $365 on consumer electronics products and $429 on computer hardware and peripherals." The author also reminds those who might be interested in marketing technology products to the 55 + crowd to consider senior-friendly computers, smartphones for seniors, tools to keep the mind and body sharp, and the importance of simplicity.

Looking for information on how Americans feel about...well, almost anything? Check out the online data available through the General Social Survey . The GSS has asked the same core " demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal questions" since 1972, allowing us to monitor social change throughout this period. You can browse variables (alphabetically) here. It's literally "abortion" to "zodiac."

Demographics are a very important part of the research that we do here at the Research Network. While demographic is defined on dictionary.com as "a statistic characterizing human populations (or segments of human populations) broken down by age or sex or income etc", this definition does not cover the many uses of demographics. Demographics can help a small business owner decide where to open a new business, who the business' target audience should be, and many other essential aspects of operating a small business. Below are links to demographics information that is available for free. Bureau of Labor Statistics Demographic Data American Fact Finder - Demographics from the U.S. Census Social Statistics Briefing Room - The White House I also found a useful pathfinder from the University of Michigan Documents Center on Statistical Resources on the Web - Demographics and Housing

Occasionally we'll get a request for psychographics . We have The Lifestyle Market Analyst demographics, which can tell you a lot about popular activities and interests of a metro area, or how those lifestyles overlap ( i.e. , how many people interested in fashion clothing also care about fine foods?). We also have MOSAIC lifestyle descriptions for determining lifestyle groups by geography from the Demographics Now database. But for those of you that want more, here's a couple of freebies (thanks to the J.J. Hill blog for pointing them out) Newspaper Association of America's Consumer Segmentation Snapshots While there's a focus on newspaper readership, this site offers profiles of different consumer buying groups for finance, technology, buying styles, food/cooking, health, vacation/travel and automotive purchases. From Claritas (a Nielsen company) - You Are Where You Live Enter the zip code you are interested in and the "segmentation system defines every neigh...

Here's something I didn't know: The average age of a U.S. head of household is 49.5 years old. According to Advertising Age's " The Changing Face of the U.S. Consumer: What We Can Learn from Census Data, and Why It Matters for Brands ," households headed by two age groups, 35 to 44 and 45 to 54, currently account for almost half of U.S. consumer spending. But these groups are shrinking, so in the future more spending come from households headed by someone 55 or older. And they may be looking for different things to spend their money on.

Canada at a glance presents the current Canadian demographic, education, health, justice, housing, income, labour market, economic, travel, financial, and foreign trade statistics. This booklet also includes important international comparisons, so that readers can see how Canada stacks up against its neighbours. Updated yearly, Canada at a glance is a very useful reference for those who want quick access to current Canadian statistics. Remember, Canada Day is July 1.