CFs as an untapped market?

I was reading the thread about marketing cars to kids...and got to thinking. Households with children are not the majority in the USA anymore. I wonder if American advertisers are going to start seeing if they can market specifically to people who aren't raising kids, and don't plan to? We all know that the CF, while less numerous than the breeders, do have a larger percentage of discretionary income. Seems like they're passing up a chance to make an awful lot of money.

Wonder why?

The childfree would be an excellent target for advertisement. However, it does appear that those with children do tend to be the biggest consumers. Christmas is a perfect example of people willing to go into credit card debt so to put all of those presents under the three for those sprogs. Back in 2000, I worked with a man who bought a Playstation for his young daughter despite the god-awful high costs and how he ws not making a ton of money. Who wants to bet that Bratlina does not even pick up the darn thing now that she is a teenager and into the next fad? Breeders buy...buy....buy regardless of the time of year. Corporations spend their advertising dollars for the consumers who spend the most $$$$.

The Childfree spend tons more money than the breeders do. Sure, the breeders spend money, but it's on the same crap. It's like a cookie-cutter laundry list of items bought by breeders and doesn't differ much from household to household.

The CF on the other hand, spend money in a multitude of categories.

You can always find the Breedersons patronizing the chain restaurants, too.

CFers are more sophisticated in their shopping. They (not all, of course) can afford nice food and wine, stuff like that. And get to enjoy their purchases, too! No brats smashing things or getting their filthy little hands on them.

Being in marketing and PR, I asked our marketing researchers and they said the CF/EN tend to be huge savers and account for a huge share of the financial services industry marketing. We tend to have larger bank accounts versus the breeders as a percentage of total household income and also tend to have less debt relative to our assets. We also tend to be more highly educated, less socially and politically conservative and better adapters of new technologies and emerging industries.

Traditionally (and I do mean OOOLD tradition), the largest adult (not in the "X" rated sense) CF/EN market segments were the senior citizens, gay, single and DINK markets. The gay market is one that many companies go after, because the gaybee boom is really not that large relative to the single segment. Single moos and duhds have taken a fair chunk out of the purchasing/marketing power of that segment and the DINKs tend to spend a lot of money but in a different manner.

Senior citizens and pre-retireds have the largest bank accounts and are the largest customer marketing segment for the financial services industries. Breeders are on the low end of that sector.

Just some observations I make after talking to our research folks. Funny what you can learn from economists!

Interesting comments. I hadn't thought about the diversity of hobbies, etc that CFs spend their money on. Good point. Childed people will always need certain things...strollers, diapers, maybe college funds.

Thanks for the feedback, CFBitchfromLA. I have noticed the segment of marketing pitching to gays, retireds, and pre-retireds. I guess younger, voluntarily childless folks are just too hard to pin down, marketing-wise? I always seem to feel that advertisers sure aren't speaking to me, anyway...even the ads without babies don't work.