There is a desperate desire, especially in business, to quantify and juxtapose aggregate factors. Demographics and data analysis can be worthwhile endeavors, to be sure. What demographic is most interested in your product? Which demographic is interested, but never buys? What demographic could not be bothered to consider your product? From the standpoint of the retailer, knowing who is purchasing, who is merely interested, and who has no need for your product can mean the difference between abject failure and moderate success.
Finding your target demographic is the specialty of the marketing firm and the raison d’etre of market research. Any marketing firm worth its proverbial salt will have the capacity to draw upon at least a million possible individuals and families from which they can extrapolate certain specifics. Why does group A love Yoostar? Are they males, under 35 who fancy themselves actors? How will this affect your marketing strategy?
The field of demographic survey is not a science in the strictest sense. Though statistical information is indeed aggregated and categorized, there is a substantial margin for what is known as “survey ambivalence.” This defines the possibility that the participants in any given survey or research group are ambivalent to the subject matter and, in essence, fabricates feedback.
This is why statisticians, for as dearly as they crave a legitimate scientific status, will never obtain one. The possibility for bias and untruth is substantial enough to render most polling and consumer feedback questionnaires useless. In the end, they signify nothing, save the numbers they have aggregated. This means, while the marketing firm knows full well their information may be skewed, it can make for a very compelling case for hiring them. If they can tell you XYZ loves product X, then all the better.
This reliance on statistical gerrymandering is, perhaps, the downfall of middle management. So eager are most middle managers, and even some vice presidents, that they will embrace any set of numbers that justifies their salaries — even to the detriment of the company they work for. After all, in the end, company loyalty boils down to the cold necessities of the bigger and better deal — even when that means finding it at another company.
Understanding key demographic factors can be incredibly useful, even for an entertainment business like Yoostar.