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Target the
class that has the capacity and the inclination to spend.
Madison
has pursued this dictum with a recent survey that studies
the spending and media consuming habits of the well-heeled
and provides media planners with guidelines on zeroing in
on this miniscule but powerful class.
Concluding
that a rise in disposable income among the rich segment of
society has seen the launch of several high end products and
services, the agency has tracked the way the increasingly
affluent are using their money. While consumption of new generation
products is slated to increase at 25 to 40 per cent every
year in India, standard indicators like the Monthly Household
Income (MHI) are not being adequate to track the actual spending
of the well-heeled class, the study notes. The agency studied
the habits of the Well Heeled Class (WHC) in Ahmedabad, Bangalore,
Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai.
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The
well-heeled class: A minuscule minority with awesome
spending power
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Most of
the well-heeled class belongs to SEC A, according to the study,
while Mumbai and Bangalore have higher representation from SEC
B. WHC form a minuscule percentage of the so-called elitist
SEC A. Except for Cinema, the reach of all other media is significantly
higher among WHC. WHC show marked preference for Business and
other niche content in various media, the study says. Specialist
magazines or specific section in leading newspapers - like Business
section, Page three society content will be more effective in
reaching out to WHC, it says.
Work pressure
means that most of the WHC prefer late night viewing. Also,
only 7.2% of the WHC do not watch English programming while
nearly 50% of SEC A population does not watch English programming.
Nearly 12% of WHC members spend more than 75% of their viewing
time on English programming. FM radio scores high too. Radio
listenership analysis shows that listening to FM radio while
driving to work and back is popular. The preferred programming
genres for listening are Film based, News and Cricket commentary.
WHC tend
to significantly spend more time on the net especially on
weekdays, notes the study. Significantly, 26% of the WHC have
reported business as the reason for accessing the net. Most
of the products aimed at WHC are highly personalised in nature
and advertisers could look at using the net to build strong
Customer Relationship Management destinations, it says.
The fact
that well-heeled members form a minuscule percent of the population,
leads to inadequate and often erroneous audience measurement,
particularly in television. Television audience measurement
is based on a panel data and representation of the well-heeled
class is extremely low, says the study. This miniscule composition
means media planners need to temper various media research
data where sample size determination and measurement is normally
based on the socio economic classification.
A small
sample size leads to high relative error especially for small
rating size, says the study. This means that there is a tendency
to "under report" niche channels like Discovery, HBO that
one would intuitively select for the well-heeled class.
The WHC in most metros prefers niche
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Recruitment of well heeled families into the audience
panel is extremely difficult as most reject the idea of having
peoplemeters in their homes, the study notes. Random sampling
assumes that everybody within a pre-defined universe has an
equal chance of being qualified as a sample. However, most
of WHC members reject to be a sample leading to bias at the
sampling state itself. The recent highly publicised "rating
point scam" provided enough evidence of this bias. The profile
of the disclosed SEC A families did not match with the expectations
of a typical advertiser. Audience evaluation packages have
ownership of durables as one of the audience filter criteria.
One would assume that a tighter audience definition is thus
possible. However, the sample size turns out to be insufficient,
thus defeating the entire exercise.
These inaccuracies
lead media planners to select programmes on a broad based
audience, failing to target the niche WHC viewer. To counter
this anomaly, Madison Media has evolved a correction factor
that help in assessing the true value of various niche television
channels, based on the unmeasured WHC and the measured SEC
A. The correction factor was arrived at by comparing the values
of "Channels normally watched" reported in NRS 2001. Higher
index value indicates higher relative popularity of the channel.
Madison found that:
**Popularity of Hindi Channels like Zee and Sony in
non southern cities is lower among the well-heeled class.
**Higher index values for Hindi Channels in southern
cities indicate that well-heeled members watch programming
in other languages apart from their regional language. In
general, English language channels are preferred among the
well-heeled class.
**There is a marked preference for news based programming
**HBO
performs well in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi than in Ahmedabad,
Bangalore and Chennai.
This
means that for niche brands, media weight plans will be effective
and reach at various levels could be examined as a reality
check, says the study. It concludes that advertisers will
increasingly design and market products aimed at a niche segment
of the society.
"Demassification"
or anti mass production are thoughts that are gaining currency
among the business leaders. Media planners then need to be
responsive to the challenge and arrive at a framework that
best meets the marketing objective. As audience measurement
techniques are not expected to keep the pace with the requirements
of demassification, media planners need to arrive at ingenious
ways to deliver most effective and efficient solutions, the
study says.
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