Affluent Adult Market Grew 21% in Past 18 Months: African-Americans & Hispanics Comprise Growth.

Interep released a report entitled “Reaching the Affluent Consumer.” The report profiles the 31.6 million affluent adults – 16% of the population – who live in households with annual incomes of $100,000 or more. Despite troubles with the economy, the number of affluent adults increased from 26 million in 2000, or 13% of the population. Furthering this trend, in 1997, affluent adults comprised only 9% of the population.

Recent growth in the number of affluent adults has enhanced their already importance status, and has also changed the composition of the market, says Interep’s Michele Skettino. She added, “The number of minorities and women living in $100,000 plus households continues to increase. This means that marketers will need to expand their approach to targeting affluent consumers in order to fully capitalize on all segments of the current affluent community.”

How to target the evolving affluent market?

• Affluent adults are hard-to-reach consumers. Time demands, coupled with an increase in media options and programming variety – facilitated by multiple TV and computer households – adds to the challenge of reaching today’s affluents.

• For all these reasons, radio has emerged as one of the most effective media serving today’s affluent consumers. Not only do affluent consumers spend more time with radio than with any other medium, but it is also one of the few media with the ability to accompany affluent consumers throughout their busy days – at work, at home and in the car.* Each week, radio reaches nearly 9 out of 10 affluent adults (89%).**

• Spot Radio, in particular, is especially suited to targeting affluent individuals, since they tend to be geographically concentrated by metro. Almost 25% of the nation’s $150,000 plus households are located within the top 10 metropolitan areas.***

• Moreover, a variety of radio formats offer a targeted concentration of listeners from $100,000+ households, spanning the diverse range of consumers that comprise the “new” affluent market.

To view charts CLICK above on ‘More Images’.