Feature: New Research Targets Upmarket Adults

A new research project from VIPer has targeted professional, middle and senior managers to bring advertisers a snap-shot of the views of upmarket purchasing decision makers.

VIPer, which claims to have produced Britain’s first continuous media and lifestyle panel survey of ABs, is made up of a consortium of media groups; Channel 4, Classic FM, Clear Channel, Times Newspapers and Media Planning Group.

The group collects its research through ongoing surveys with a panel of one thousand 24-54 year old ABs. Its latest research concentrates on a subsection of that group, namely business professionals, who were reached through online surveys.

According to VIPer, the respondents were professional, middle and senior managers and three in four have some influence on purchasing decisions in the home, with one in ten being the final decision maker. The respondents also had an influence over purchasing decisions in the workplace, making them an important group for many advertisers.

According to the research the most popular information source for purchasing decisions is personal contact (69%), but the internet (56%) also scored highly as a source of information for purchasing. The highly-targeted specialist arena of the trade press (55%) was the third most important source of information.

Traditional forms of advertising did not score highly, with TV (19%), Radio (12%) and Posters (5%) at the bottom of the chart. However, direct mail (38%) is well ranked as an important source of information.

(The results were based on 271 completed interviews, which according to VIPer represented a 36% response rate.)

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