Monday, October 20, 2003

Lifestyles, Dating and Romance –A study of mid life singles

You are unlikely to see this headline on the SAGA web site but you will if you go to AARP, the US advocacy group for Americans over 50.
They have recently released the results of a survey of the views of 1,400 men and 2,100 women aged 40 to 69 about being single.

According to the survey, 60% of singles aged 40-69 are women, a majority of them divorced. Forty-two percent of the men and 24 percent of the women had never been married.

This is a significant piece of research both in its breadth and the depth of the analysis. You can download the full report (200 pages) or go to the singles resources that AARP have created. Here you will find helpful things like the ‘Interactive Personal Ad Maker’, ‘Message Board for Dating Horror Stories’ and a ‘Message Board for Navigating the Dating Scene’. Can you just see SAGA having this sort of stuff?

Here are a few of the findings:

56 percent of all singles are currently separated or divorced from a spouse
31 percent have never been married
70 percent of formerly married singles in their 50s have been single for five years or more
53 percent of those in the survey say having "more personal freedom" is the best perk of being single
38 percent say it's having their house and things just the way they want them to be
28 percent love not having to answer to another person

I am not immediately sure how, as a marketer, we utilise this research but it is fascinating reading! Once I have studied the thing in detail I will give my views on the marketing implications. It would be really interesting to compare these findings against other age groups.

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