What Exactly Are Demographics?
In the broadest sense, demographics are a description of the vital statistics or the objective and quantifiable characteristics of an audience or population. When most of us think about demographics we think of population, households, income, ethnicity, etc. These are fine examples, but today you can break down demographics into the most discrete categories and look at detail unimagined before. The U.S. Census Bureau offers information across a wide spectrum of characteristics. Several demographic vendors take the U.S. census data and massage it further into even more categories. With each data vendor pushing their product it is easy to become overwhelmed by the simplistic charm of packaged demographics reports and ultimately use them in the wrong way or rely too heavily on them, to the exclusion of other important factors.
Consider this: in general terms, demographics tend to represent only 40% of total influence on sales success. As the chart above shows, demographics are a very important component of selecting the right locations. However, if you use demographics alone you are missing 60% of the remaining factors that influence sales performance. Moreover, the demographics that contribute to sales performance in our graph have been statistically analyzed. Raw, unappended demographics will contribute far less than even 40% to your understanding of the potential of a site.
For more information about demographics and trade area definition please click on the following link – white paper link [Comprehensive Loyalty & Site Perfect Research]