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Cohort Analysis – Aging Together
By Seth L. Ginsburg
There is more to understanding a consumer
audience than demographics per se. In addition to creating a
cost-effective and timely perspective on a target audience, secondary
research can be extremely helpful in crafting an in depth model of
consumer attitudes, motivations and cultural assumptions.
Generational Cohorts
A large proportion of our assumptions about what the world is like and
how it should be are derived from the lessons we learn as we grow up –
especially the formative years of childhood and adolescence. As we get
older, these lessons come to serve as the criteria that we use to
evaluate future experiences, situations and – of great importance to us
as marketers – brands, products and services.
While many of these experiences are idiosyncratic – due to our personal
or family surroundings – in the age of mass communications (which has
dominated out lives since early in the Twentieth Century), many
formative experiences are shared with other people of a similar age –
our cohorts. For example, the experience of the Depression and World War
II formed the frame of reference for my parents’ generation as the world
of the 50’s and 60’s serves as the background for my generation.
Historical experiences unify these groups by providing a common set of
criteria that they continue to employ as they mature.
As such, in order to understand what consumers expect from categories
such as financial products or consumer technology, it is useful to look
at the attitudes that characterize their generational perspectives – the
ideas that represent “common sense” for them.
Procedure
Obviously, if you are thinking about commissioning a cohort analysis,
you have identified your prospective customers in terms of their age
groups.
• The first thing that you need to do is to redefine how you think of
their ages. Forget about the usual media breaks. What you want to know
is not how old they are now, but the years in which they were born.
• The research will begin with a focus on their formative years – the
years when your prospective customers were between the ages of 8 and 15.
The analysis will explore political and social trends that dominated
those times. In addition, we will look at contemporaneous marketing
trends and finally, at the state of the target category. If relevant, we
will evaluate category creative from the targeted era in order to
understand the influences that formed their expectations.
• Finally, the analysis will turn to look at social and marketing trends
that have taken place in the years since your prospect audience passed
through their formative years. Remember that for all of us, life is a
narrative. The goal of this stage of the analysis is to figure out how
the lessons learned in your prospect audience’s early life determine
their judgements in their continuing personal histories.
• After we have done all of this work, we will develop some hypotheses
concerning your prospect audience’s current approach to contemporary
brands, products and/or categories.
Next Steps
Remember, just because we develop hypotheses does not mean they are
correct. As such, you will want to test your hypotheses using
qualitative and/or quantitative projects. However, the hypotheses that
have been developed through the Cohort Analysis will be a useful
starting point for strategic thinking and creative efforts.
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