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Online America - classifications of Internet users

American Demographics, March 1, 2001 by Michael J. Weiss

Byline: MICHAEL J. WEISS

SAY FAREWELL TO THE GEEKY WHITE GUYS. THE NEW GENERATION OF INTERNET USERS LOOKS A LOT LIKE THE FOLKS WHO CRUISE WAL-MART - AND THEN SOME.

Three years ago, when Forrester Research launched a service to classify North Americans by their affinity for technology, most dot-coms greeted the news with a yawn. The vast majority of Internet users fell predictably into just one of 10 consumer segments, rendering the analysis worthless. "All the Internet fans came from the same group of high-income, career-minded consumers," says James McQuivey, Forrester's research director in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Our own research ended up saying, `Guess what, folks? The same people are buying, trading, and doing everything else online.'"

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How times have changed. Today, Internet users are found in all of Forrester's "technographic" types, even those with downscale, late-adopting, technology-challenged families. And clients with online customers are lining up. The same researchers who initially found so few Web users among low-income consumers that they combined three segments into one - nicknamed Sidelined Citizens - are now working to reclassify them into three Internet-savvy groups. "The change has been unbelievable," says McQuivey. "Thanks to increasing market penetration, we're seeing varying activity among all kinds of people."

Across the country, scenes like this are becoming increasingly common as research analysts try to keep up with the changing audience of the World Wide Web. The recent dot-com meltdown, resulting in massive layoffs and closings, is placing intense pressure on companies to find ways to better serve their online audience with content and advertising. However, as the number of Web fans continues to grow, marketers are struggling to monitor a moving target, adapting demographic and lifestyle segmentation systems for the first time to online consumers.

To hear the researchers tell it, the Internet is no melting pot but rather a moveable feast of different kinds of people seeking different types of online experiences. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, 56 percent of the U.S. population, nearly 154 million people, accessed the Internet in November 2000 - a 30 percent increase over the previous year. Their average age, reports ZDNet, is 39 years, and rising. Their average education - 38 percent hold a college degree - is falling. Likewise, their socioeconomic status is sinking thanks to the fastest-growing segment of Web newbies: Americans over 55 years old with working-class incomes and middlebrow tastes. The newest generation of connected Americans looks increasingly like the folks who cruise your local Wal-Mart.

"Americans online are not a monolithic group anymore," says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, D.C. "There are so many people using the Internet in so many different ways that it's hard to define the center of gravity."

This heterogeneous portrait is a far cry from the old image of Net users as geeky white guys (GWGs) who enjoyed hacking and flame-throwing their way through chat rooms and bulletin boards. The first generation of online Americans were technophiles who had enough money to acquire clunky desktops and snail-paced 14.4 modems. "They were overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly young, and overwhelmingly college educated," says Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll, which has been tracking the Internet audience since 1995.

Since then, the Web community has exploded. Cheaper and more widely accessible Internet access has allowed more downscale Americans to move online. In a final blow to the old gender stereotype, the number of women online surpassed that of men for the first time last May. Estimates vary, but Harris Interactive reports that the online community has grown by more than 900 percent over the past six years. And as the Net-using population has gone mainstream, so has its tastes. While technology news used to be the most popular subject for Americans who wanted online information, now it's the weather. As Harris' Taylor observes, "The online population inevitably looks more and more like the country as a whole."

In fact, a detailed analysis of wired America, using consumer segmentation systems, reveals an audience of Netizens nearly as diverse - and quirky - as consumers offline. Men and women, rich and poor, old and young - all go their separate ways on the Web. After Nielsen//NetRatings classified its 65,000 Web panelists into the 62 neighborhood types of PRIZM (the geodemographic cluster system developed by Claritas that segments consumers into lifestyle niches), it discovered a surprisingly eclectic society. Web users live in 32 clusters in above-average concentrations, ranging from the wealthiest suburbanites of Blue Blood Estates to the downscale country folk of Rustic Elders.

True, the clusters with the greatest access to the Internet are still home to early-adopting, upscale Americans. But the cluster whose surfers spend the most time online at home left some analysts agog: Mid-City Mix, a working-class, African American lifestyle whose residents like to chat, exchange e-mail, and hang out at entertainment and sweepstakes sites. The other top clusters for online longevity include Norma Rae-ville and Back Country Folks, characterized by people with lower incomes, modest educations, and blue-collar jobs. Norma Rae-ville residents, who are predominantly black, single, and concentrated in the South, spend 12.6 hours online each month, 26 percent more than average Americans. As a simple rule of thumb: The lower the user's income, the longer he or she is likely to spend online.

Retail Industry

Online America - classifications of Internet users

American Demographics, March 1, 2001 by Michael J. Weiss

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