Segmentation 61Stage Percentage of households
Bachelor 1.42
Newly married couples 3.11
Full nest 1 (with pre-school children) 11.91
Full nest 1 (lone parent) 1.26
Middle aged no children 1.19
Full nest 2 (school age children) 16.97
Full nest 2 (lone parent) 1.92
Launching families (with non-dependent children) 6.3
Launching families (one parent) 1.45
Empty nest 1 (childless, aged 45–54) 9.45
Empty nest 2 (retired) 9.51
Solitary survivor under 65 2.66
Solitary survivor retired 14.17
Total 81.31Figure 4.6
The modernised
family life cycle
(Source: Lawson,
1988)Illustrative Example 4.1
SKY TV
In 2004 7.4 million households had a contract with SKY for its subscription television chan-
nels, that was 43 per cent of the UK market. By 2010 SKY aimed to have increased that num-
ber to 10 million households. SKY’s management believed that no household was beyond
their reach. In order to achieve their aims SKY embarked on a comprehensive market research
exercise to ascertain consumer perceptions of their product offering in order to develop tar-
geted marketing campaigns to overcome consumer’s reluctance to subscribe to their channels.
An interesting feature in the profile of SKY subscribers that emerged was the fact that only 21
per cent of households that bought the Independent newspaper had a SKY contract. That was
a lower percentage than for any other group of national newspaper readers.Indeed households can be a useful way of looking at social grouping.
Individuals sharing a flat have to take part in group decision making for
products such as furniture, electrical appliances, etc. Lawson claims,
when discussing the 18.69 per cent of the population that do not fit into
the family life cycle, that households are likely to be a better unit with
which to analyse consumer behaviour than the family.