The 47 Percent May Struggle but the Top 20 Percent Are Feeling Flush

September 19, 2012, 7:47 pm

By STUART ELLIOTT

There has been a lot of talk about the 1 percent, the 47 percent, the 99 percent or whatever slice of the population is lately in the spotlight.

On Wednesday, we had some research on the 59 million Americans who live in households with $100,000 or more in annual income - the Mendelsohn Affluent Survey 2012, subtitled “The State of the Affluent Consumer,” which was released by Ipsos MediaCT.

The results of the survey, which has been conducted for 36 years among affluent Americans, are scrutinized by marketers, media companies and advertising agencies for clues on how best to peddle goods and services to people with money.

The affluents, as they are called in the survey, make up about a f ifth of the total population; the subset of the ultra-affluents, in the survey's parlance, who make $250,000 or more a year, is roughly 2 percent of the total population.

Although affluent Americans “don't feel as affluent as perhaps they did in the mid-2000s,” Stephen Kraus, senior vice president and chief insights officer at Ipsos MediaCT, said during a presentation of the survey, there are still “opportunities” to engage with them.

For one thing, Mr. Kraus said, affluent Americans seem interested in “re-engagement with the marketplace,” meaning they are considering shopping and spending again after some pauses and cutbacks.

For another, some affluent consumers are interested in indulging themselves and splurging on non-necessities, he added.

A third opportunity identified by Mr. Kraus was a willingness among the affluents to open their wallets and purses if “they see value in spending more to get quality.”

Indeed, the luxury s egments of many consumer product categories have held up well considering the recent global economic woes.

In studying affluent consumers by age, the survey found the largest group, 39 percent, are baby boomers, followed by Generation X, at 33 percent; millennials, at 20 percent; and the elderly, at 8 percent.

In addition, Mr. Kraus said, 8 percent is Hispanic; 7 percent Asian-American; 6 percent African-American; and 3 percent lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

A closely followed part of the annual Mendelsohn survey is its information about the media consumption habits of affluent Americans. The 2012 version of the study suggests they have an almost bottomless appetite for media.

As ownership of smartphones and tablet computers soars among the affluents, according to the survey, those wealthy consumers are pretty much turning to the traditional media as much as they have in the past. So television, radio, magazines a nd newspapers seemingly have little to fear - at least for now - from cannibalization by new media, the survey indicates.

For instance, even as ownership of tablets in affluent households rose to 47 percent this year from 14 percent last year, Mr. Kraus said, and the number of hours online each week climbed 14 percent, print media remained “very much an important part” of the lives of such consumers.

The reach of traditional print media is being augmented by apps, he added, as 4.7 million affluent Americans downloaded apps this year, about twice as many as last year.

And the “hard-copy readership” of six national daily newspapers actually rose 3.9 percent from the previous survey, Mr. Kraus said. (The newspapers are The Financial Times, Investor's Business Daily, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.)

Still, the interest in new media among the people rich enough to buy innumerable gadgets cannot be und erestimated.

For example, the percentages of respondents who said they visited or used social media within the previous week were still growing in the 2012 survey. For Facebook, the percentage rose to 63 percent from 58 percent. For LinkedIn, it rose to 18 percent from 13 percent.

And for Twitter, the increase was 50 percent, to 12 percent from 8 percent.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter by clicking here.