‘Lifestage’ could prove a more valuable tool than age for targeting marketing activities, according to a report by Newspaper Society Marketing. The report points to the fact that age is no longer a reliable indicator of lifestyle and attitude, suggesting that segmenting the population according to ‘lifestages’ such as “Left parent’s home and live alone or in shared accommodation” and “Children have all left home, live with partner or alone” can provide more accurate information on people’s lifestyles.
The Lifestage Report, which was based on classification developed by Newspaper Society Marketing and BMRB, analysed media consumption, attitudes and lifestyle, and use of products and services according to lifestage. Newspaper Society Marketing claims to have tested its classification against age and social grade: “The results suggest that not only can lifestage discriminate effectively, but standard demographics are not always the most appropriate classification tools for target marketing,” it says.
In the case of media consumption, those living at home were found to have newspaper reading habits similar to their parents. When these people moved out of the parental home, they began to consume less of the popular papers and move towards quality nationals. Moving towards the later lifestages, the mid markets became more popular.
Television viewing also showed variation between lifestages, with Channel 4 finding the largest number of heavy viewers amongst those who live with their parents and at the other end of the scale, when children have left home. GMTV contrasts with low amounts of heavy viewing from these two lifestages, but the highest concentration in the middle lifestage: “Children in household, majority are of pre-school age”.
Mike Jeanes, research manager at the Newspaper Society commented that: “Lifestage can help define patterns of behaviour and consumption in different stages of life, which in turn can help direct advertising activity in terms of creative design, message and media mix.”
Newspaper Society: 020 7636 7014
