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Net Prophet - by Dylan Tweney

March 23, 1998

Who's on the Web -- and what they're buying


The face of the Web is changing.

It used to be that Internet users were primarily college students and computer science graduates. They were young, male, and often they held well-paying jobs in high-technology industries. In short, they were geeks.

That demographic started to change with the advent of the Web, and Mosaic and other browsers allowed people without extensive knowledge of Unix commands to access content on the Internet. Still, the Internet's overall makeup still tended towards young, male, college-educated, technology-literate users.

No more. The Internet is now used by a more diverse crowd than ever before. But some things, as I found out recently, haven't changed.

The more things change ...

Mark Wright is the CEO of @Plan, a relatively new Internet market research firm. You can find them on the Web at http://www.webplan.net. I spoke to Wright on the phone last week to find out about the Web's changing demographics.

Demographic changes that have already taken place, as business theorist Peter Drucker has pointed out, have significant bearing on business trends that are yet to come. So you can learn a lot about what is about to happen in business by looking at what has already occurred demographically.

On the Web, consumers have become more diverse in their age and gender makeup. You're just as likely to find forty-year-olds surfing the Web now as twenty-year-olds, Wright told me. And, although Web surfers are still 60 percent male, there are more women than ever online. In fact, according to Wright, there are now 6.5 million professional, manager-level women on the Internet -- and that number is increasing rapidly.

But what hasn't changed is that Web surfers are still highly educated and relatively affluent. According to Wright, the average income for Web surfers is more than $75,000 a year. And 28 percent of Internet users surveyed by @Plan have a master's degree or higher, while 64 percent have at least a college degree.

These facts go a long way towards explaining why certain categories of retail products, such as CDs, books, travel, computers, and investments, have done well on the Web. What those product categories have in common, Wright says, is that they appeal to a highly educated, affluent, upwardly-mobile group of consumers.

"If I were in e-commerce," Wright told me, "my first question would be: What is going to appeal to that demographic?"

Tracking behavior, not stereotypes

It's still relatively difficult for much of the world to get on the Web. Despite falling computer prices, a PC and an Internet connection are still out of the reach of many.

As a result, until Internet access is as common as televisions and telephones are today, the Internet's core demographic is going to remain educated and affluent.

Marketing to a demographic like this may be difficult for traditional vendors of consumer products, who are used to thinking of consumers in terms of age, gender, and race. Those classifications, though not irrelevant on the Web, are less important than educational background and interests. After all, on the Internet, no one knows your race, gender, or even your geographic location, unless you choose to give that information.

What the Web enables is a new kind of consumer classification based on behavior. For instance, although you can't presently target "males aged 18 to 24" on the Internet, you can easily target "people interested in upgrading their PCs" or "people looking for luxury minivans."

This targeting can be as simple as purchasing banner ads on sites devoted to the behaviors or interests you want to reach. On a more sophisticated level, you can use software like NetPerceptions GroupLens (see our recent review, Feb. 27, 1998) to deliver content to site visitors based on what they've already clicked on.

Expect behavior-based marketing to increase in importance. It will probably remain difficult to target online consumers based on traditional demographic groupings. On the other hand, targeting consumers based on their actual interests will get ever easier for those companies that are able to deploy and use the appropriate technology.

What trends do you see on the Web, and how are you taking advantage of them? Write to me at dylan@infoworld.com.


Dylan Tweney edits InfoWorld's I-commerce section online and in print.


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