The fourth annual IPSOS-RSL report on the design for living pursued by Europe’s elite four per cent was unveiled last week.
Intended to aid pan-European media planning, the survey offers insight into the outlook and attitudes of the continent's 10.4 million most beautiful people, alongside their media consumption and lifestyle. It measures readership, TV viewing, web site use, consumer and business behaviour and attitudes.
The qualified sample of respondents was 10,573. To qualify for the accolade of inclusion in the survey, one must …
• Be at least 25 years old
• Work at least fifteen hours a week
• Enjoy a personal income in the top 5% in each country
• Have travelled on at least six international business trips in the past year; or
• Be a director of a company with at least 25 employees.
The broad variety of people covered is evident in their agreement or otherwise with statements made in the survey:
• Invited to agree or disagree with the statement I consider myself a citizen of Europe, not just my own country or any specific country, 61% loftily agreed.
• However, having an international perspective on current affairs is important to me drew disagreement from a surprising 23%.
• I try to avoid buying genetically modified food, said 51%.
• I am not afraid of taking business risks, declared an adventurous 43%.
• I make sure that work does not prevent me from spending time with friends and family, claimed 65%.
Among the other survey data it emerges that …
• Average personal income for the group is circa €80k annually, average personal investments are around €350k; while more than a third own a second home.
• Predictably, nearly all have internet access, while pan-European TV channels also reach the majority of them each week (6.4 million or 61%) and almost three quarters of the sample each month. CNN and Eurosport get the highest reach among the specific services covered, respectively with 45.1% and 39.3%.
• But despite the reported rise and rise of online banking, a surprisingly small minority (28%) of these high fliers currently use such a service.
Nearly 300,000 households across sixteen European countries were screened by telephone to find eligible individuals. A telephone interview was conducted for TV viewing and a postal self completion questionnaire for all other data.
The survey’s major sponsors include media agencies Carat International, Delphys, Initiative Media, Media Planning Group, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia, Mindshare, OMD, PHD, Starcom Mediavest, Universal McCann and Zenith Optimedia.
Among the participating media owners were BBC World, BusinessWeek, CNN, The Economist, the Financial Times, Fortune, International Herald Tribune, National Geographic, Newsweek and Time.
Data sourced from: Daily Research News Online; additional content by WARC staff
