What lifestage is your market?

The advertising, marketing and media industries rely heavily on consumer, market and audience research. So important is research that for decades, these industries have commissioned and funded the joint-industry research tools under the custodianship of SAARF.

Thanks to AMPS, RAMS, and TAMS, data abounds. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for time. Time pressures make in-depth data-mining a seldom-achieved goal. All too often, people fall back on the SAARF LSMs - they're quick, easy, and everyone in the boardroom knows what you're talking about.

Segmentation tools

There are other SAARF segmentation tools, however, which can as quickly and easily add to the profile being built up about a market. One of them is SAARF Lifestages, which places all adults over 16 into groups based on where they are in life - from an At-Home Single to a Mature Family. These Lifestages are personal to the respondent and are determined by: age, marital status and whether dependent children in various age categories are living with them or not.

SAARF recently updated the Lifestages groups to take into account the changing structure of South African society. The previous Lifestage classifications only took into account people's own children in the family. The latest groupings take all dependents in the household into account, whether they are the respondent's own children or someone else's.

The first three groups have no dependents, and are not married or living with a significant other:

• At-Home Singles - up to 34-years-old, living at home with parents
  
• Young Independent Singles - up to 34-years-old
  
• Mature Singles - over 35-years-old

• Young Couples - up to 49-years-old
  
• Mature Couples - aged 50+

The final three groups are families with dependents:

• Single Parent Families - not married or living with a significant other, with children.
  
• Young Families - married or living together, at least one child under 13
  
• Mature Families - married or living together, with children older than 13

It is important to remember that since the SAARF Lifestage is an individual, rather than a household, demographic; you could find various lifestages living together under one roof. A commune of university students would consist of a number of Young Independent Singles. They are single, in the sense that they're not married, but they don't live alone. Single Parent Families are often part of multi-person households. Or you could find a working grandmother (Mature Single), paying her own way, living with her daughter's family (a Mature Family or Mature Couple). Neither are dependent on each other, but they live under one roof. The permutations are numerous.

What can lifestage add to the picture?

“Lifestage gives extensive insights into how people adapt their consumption and purchasing behaviour to their family environment,” explains Dr Clive Corder, a consultant to SAARF. “Lifestage is a determinant of how much discretionary time and money you have, and what your priorities are, which influence your media usage, product purchase and consumption.”

Disregarding the impact of lifestage could result in a distorted view of a market. Take everyone's favourite target market - LSM 10. The 16 - 24 age group makes up 22.3% of LSM 10 (AMPS 2008A), but it would be wrong to think of these young upper LSM people in the same way as you would their parents.

“While the household has a high living standard, the 20-year-old student living there is not the source of that well-being, and probably doesn't own much of the household's possessions,” says Dr Paul Haupt, CEO of SAARF. “Knowing he is an At-Home Single gives you far more insight into his media and purchasing habits than knowing he is in LSM 10. This is generally an older LSM, dominated by those in the Mature Couples and Families lifestages.”

Age, too, can be similarly misleading. We lump together the 16 - 24 age group, but an 18-year-old is probably in a totally different place in her life to a 24-year-old. People of the same age will even be in various lifestages. The 20-year-old At-Home Single living with her parents is not in the same space as the 20-year-old Young Independent Single fending for herself.

When to use SAARF Lifestages

Segmenting a market by lifestage makes sense for a lot of product categories. “Some products enjoy fairly consistent use throughout a person's life, while others vary extensively,” explains Corder. “In all cases however, lifestage provides the household context and can often lead to insights into how to develop and promote markets.”

Take car ownership, which is clearly linked to lifestage. Only 17% of Single Parent Families have a car in the household, compared to 55% of Mature Couples (AMPS 2008A). Clothing is another good example. If you're promoting men's clothing, the male-dominated young Singles and Young Couples are a good bet, while there is only limited purchase of men's clothing among Single Parent Families.

Media consumption is also affected by lifestage. For instance, commercial stations have their highest incidence of listeners with At-Home and Young Independent Singles and Young Couples. Public broadcast stations have above average reach with both Mature Singles and Single Parent Families.

Haupt sums it up: “Lifestages can add an extra layer to your knowledge about how a market behaves. They can thus assist you in deciding what products and services you should offer, how to reach your market, and how to tailor your messages to resonate with your market's stage of life.”