The Media Habits of Wealthy Americans
Geoffrey Precourt
WARC Online
Ipsos Mendelsohn (IM), formerly known as Monroe Mendelsohn Research until its acquisition by Ipsos this year, has examined upscale America via its annual Affluent Surveys for the last 32 years. For the 2008 report, the organization increased its base-income level from $85,000 to $100,000 and surveyed a number of new categories.
These include the usage frequency of Internet search engines, the popularity of more than 200 Websites and how quickly the most wealthy Americans are taking to using mobile devices as a means to access the Internet. To determine trends in e-commerce, IM also investigated 62 potential Internet activities that consumers could initiate with mobile devices or personal computers.
When the Affluent Surveys began in 1977, the income threshold was $40,000. Based on its evaluation of recent U.S. Census data, IM estimates there are currently some 42 million Americans-or 20 percent of all households-whose income exceeds $100,000. Of that group, 60 percent earn between $100,000 and $149,999; 30 percent are recorded between $150,000 and $249,000; and 10 percent earn more than $250,000.
Digital media use
The income breakouts are particularly valuable in examining digital-media usage. For instance, 47 percent of the entire $100,000-plus group uses mobile devices to access the Internet. In the lowest tier, usage is 34 percent. But, when the bar is raised to $250,000-plus, the usage figure jumps 67 percent to 57 percent.
The differences are less pronounced for Internet use: Users in the $100,000-$149,000 range averaged 20 hours of use a week. And, the figures rise slightly with income levels: the next tier averages 25.1 hours online a week and the $250,000-plus group reported a total of 24.7 weekly Internet hours.
Source: The 2008 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, IPSOS Mendelsohn
"From my perspective, the most surprising part of the research was the digital usage by the affluent," said Bob Shullman, IM president. "The conventional wisdom is that the digital world is all about kids. And it's just not so. In the affluent space, 99 percent of the households have computer access; 99 percent of them have cellphones. And, if anyone has the technical ability to take advantage of these tools, these are the people who are going to do so."
Spending levels
The IM data also broke out levels of spending among the entire affluent study group. Heavy spenders (spent $50,000 or more), who represented only 25 percent of the sample, accounted for 54 percent of the total affluent expenditures. Medium spenders (between $25,000 and $50,000), 37 percent of the study group, were responsible for 37 percent of the expenditures. The trend followed through to the so-called light spenders (less than $25,000), whose totals were only 15 percent of the entire group, even though they represented 38 percent of the measured households.
Source: The 2008 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, IPSOS Mendelsohn
Internet use
The frequency with which wealthy people use search engines is crisp evidence of Shullman's finding: that a full 78 percent of the lowest wealth tier use Google; 84 percent of the middle group use the engine; and, in the wealthiest group, the figure is even higher. And, while Google dominates, it is not the exclusive search engine for the most affluent spenders: 55 percent also use Yahoo!, 30 percent use MSN.com, and 25% tap into AOL.com's search service.
Source: The 2008 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, IPSOS Mendelsohn
The five most popular activities among affluent computer users are emailing, mapping, checking the weather, and reading the news. Among mobile users, text-messaging is the most popular function, followed by photography (taking, sending, or receiving pictures), emailing, downloading ring tones and game-playing.
Online activities that receive heavy PC use and light mobile consideration include bill paying (68 percent of PC users, 1.8 percent of digital users), researching products/services (62.3 percent/1.3 percent), and obtaining travel information (66.8 percent/2.3 percent).
Online buying
Nearly 69 percent of affluent heads of households used the Internet to purchase airline tickets; 65.7 percent to book hotels/motels; 43.7 percent to buy women's apparel and accessories (as compared to 39.9 percent for comparable men's goods), and 39.6 percent to buy books. For mobile users, the top five digital purchases-all under 6 percent of the total affluent audience-were take-out food (5.8 percent), hotel/motel reservations (2.5 percent), prescription medicines (1.6 percent), airline tickets (1.4 percent), and event tickets (1.4 percent).
Traditional media
In addition to new media, IM also studied the popularity of traditional media among wealthy Americans. All three break-out groups among the affluent sampling listened to about 11 hours of radio a week. And, while the bottom group of the three affluent groups reported the most TV hours per week (20), the differences between the other two groups were not pronounced (19.2 and 17.8 hours, respectively).
Source: The 2008 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, IPSOS Mendelsohn
Oddly, there was a sharp difference in the average number of magazines read by the low-level wealthy (15.8), the moderately wealthy (18.8) and the very rich (25.5). Shullman said that the data pointed to a direct correlation between wealth, education, and magazine readership. The most affluent are better educated and one of the ways they manifest that education is through the consumption of printed material.
Source: The 2008 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, IPSOS Mendelsohn
Slightly counter-intuitive, however, was the selection of publications across the total affluent population: People was the most popular magazine, followed by National Geographic/National Geographic Traveler, Pace in-flight magazines, Sports Illustrated and Time.
Cable falls somewhere between old and new media and IM's affluent study recorded the family of ESPN offerings (ESPN, ESPN Classic, ESPN2, and ESPNews) as the predominate favorite U.S. cable offering among the very rich, followed by CNN, The Discover Channel, The History Channel, and The Weather Channel.
Those who did not find their programs of choice on cable were almost evenly split among the four over-the-air networks, with AMC and NBC edging out Fox and CBS.
Ipsos Mendelsohn's data-compilation period ran four months, from the middle of March 2008, through the middle of July.
 | Geoffrey Precourt joined WARC Online as its US Editor in July 2008. Prior to joining WARC Online, Geoffrey held senior editorial roles at titles including Strategy + Business, Point, Smart Business and Fortune, and edited the book CMO Thought Leaders: The Rise of the Strategic Marketer. |