Second50Years Marketing Blog

The Media Audit, produced by International Demographics, has a new survey that shows consumers over the age of 50 and with incomes of $50,000 or more, have increased from 17 million in 2004 to 22.3 million during the past five years.

The research report calls these consumers the “graying and affluent,” and says that this consumer segment has increased from 13.1 percent to 15.7 percent of all the households surveyed since 2004. Furthermore, Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics, says, “….this group is very rapidly embracing the internet as a shopping medium.”

In the latest survey, 62.4 percent of the graying and affluent households have made at least one purchase on the Internet in the past year. That is up from 50.2 percent in the prior survey. More than 37 percent made five or more purchases on the Internet during the past year; and 20.1 percent made 12 or more purchases.

The increase in Internet shopping seems to be led by baby boomers who are rapidly becoming empty nesters. This group’s media of choice are newspapers and the Internet. More than 27 percent of the gray empty nesters spend an hour or more each day reading newspapers; and 38.7 percent spend 430 minutes or more each week on the Internet.

Other noteworthy data points include:

• 62.4 percent of the “graying and affluent” households have incomes of $75,000 or more; 38 percent had incomes of $100,000 or more; and 18 percent had incomes of $150,000 or more.
• Households of this segment have fewer members than in the earlier survey, with the percent of “gray” households having one or two persons increasing to 63.5; households with 3 or 4 members decreasing from 31.2 to 29.7; and households with 5 or more members declining to 6.8 percent from 7.1 percent.

The survey also shows that affluent empty nesters eat out frequently, drink wine, often spend more than $30,000 on their automobiles, take ocean cruises, and visit casinos. Meanwhile supermarket expenditures are just average.

The number of affluent empty nesters varies greatly geographically. In this study, nearly 19 percent of the households in the Fort Myers-Naples market are affluent empty nesters; while only 8.9 percent are in Buffalo. The average across all markets in the survey was 12.5 percent.

Affluent empty nesters are not necessarily retired or even near retirement age. Some 24 percent are 65 years old or older; 38.7 percent are between 45 and 54; and 47.3 percent are between 55 and 64.

The research report says,

“The empty nesters are another example of the enormous impact the presence or absence of children has on almost all household expenditures….f they included children the weekly supermarket expenditures would be considerably higher and the wine, dine and casino expenditures much lower.”

Sources:

*Full research report.