One issue is that, more than ever before, consumers are chameleons - they don't fit neatly into social demographic strata. Take an affluent customer in an upmarket area, with a good job, for instance, and you may find that on business they may fly first class and dine in excellent restaurants, but on Saturdays they may take the kids to McDonalds and have a beer in their local pub. They may f l y economy on family holidays. This demonstrates the increasing difficulties with using demographic analysis to predict habits and define markets.
CUSTOMERS IN UPMARKET AREAS
But we're trying to communicate in an environment that is full of background noise and full of confusion. It's a fight for attention out there, and the background noise is making life difficult for everyone. What makes up this background noise? Competition, distraction, other pressures, different ways of working, excessive media, too much choice - these factors all make customers more and more likely to "flit" away. Customer knowledge provides companies with a competitive lead: knowing what your customers want, why they are defecting, where they are going. What's import- ant is using and managing customer information in a blurred and confused world. Yet this isn't happening. According to research by the SAS Institute, "90% of respondents do not have entirely integrated information on their customers".