Content area
Full Text
Marketing in the 1990s has become a narrow and targeted discipline. In the hospitality industry, for instance, hotel marketers no longer rely on broadly defined market segments (e.g., corporate travelers, tourists, convention business). Marketing experts are pinpointing a select group of potential customers and learning everything about their location, habits, attitudes, friends, travel companions, priorities, and pleasure points.
In this decade, more so than in previous ones, the focus of marketing gurus has been the affluent, the super-rich, and the famous. Those are the consumers who can afford to enjoy the best product money can buy, and those are the customers who can make your property a success.
Although Robin Leach, the self-proclaimed expert on the lifestyles of the rich and famous, has given us a glimpse into the world of the super-rich, he has never attempted to give marketers enough insight to reach, communicate with, sell to, and satisfy those who can afford to travel anywhere, anytime. As a marketer who has been looking at the affluent market segment for clients such as Cartier's, Town & Country magazine, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and ITT Sheraton's deluxe hotels, I am writing this article to separate fact from fiction and to guide those seeking clients categorized as the most affluent travelers.
The upper 6 percent of American society is known as the affluent. That means a combined household income of over $100,000 a year. Yet most sophisticated marketing experts do not believe that a couple with an income of $100,000 is affluent. I usually divide the group of wealthy consumers into three smaller groups: the affluent, the rich, and the super-rich. Each of those subsegments has its own needs, buying habits, and priorities.
According to Town & Country, out of 182 million adult Americans, the affluent are the 5.4 percent of the population earning $100,000 to $250,000 a year (9.8 million people) the rich are the 0.5 percent with an income of $250,000 to $500,000 (one million people); and the superrich are the 0.3 percent earning $500,000 or more (600,000 people).(1)
Tufts sociology professor Susan Ostrander observes:
One percent of the total population owns 50 percent of the nation's stock and 20 percent of the national wealth (real estate, cash, bonds, insurance); controls major...