Affluence is an interesting word. To some it means having the discretionary income to take a year-long global vacation. To others the implication of affluence or luxury may be less ambitious. But to marketers, affluence has been the Holy Grail, representing consumers with money to burn.

Today, "luxury” constitutes a $400 billion market and is estimated to become a one trillion dollar market by 2010. According to the Luxury Marketing Council, the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. households have an average income of $270,000, an average net worth totaling nearly $3 million, and more than $1 million in average financial assets. More than 1.2 million households have a net worth of more than $5 million. By all standards, the luxury market is the most robust and while regular retail sales have increased between four and six percent annually, the luxury market has grown between 20 and 30 percent in the last decade. What's more household income for the top 20 percent of the wealthiest households is up 70 percent in the last 20 years.

But, thus far, this potentially lucrative market has been elusive to most marketers. It used to be that affluent consumers bought premium items, middle-class consumers bought value-priced items, and lower-income consumers bought strictly based on price. Simple, right? Not any more. Today, many people are living beyond their means, and millionaires shop at Wal-Mart.

What's more, traditional prospecting is less effective than ever before. Everyday, consumers are faced with thousands of images, from billboards to banners. Marketers are faced with decreasing budgets and a mandate to do more with less, and looking for new ways to reach elusive markets.

But today, there is a way to effectively identify and target potential affluent buyers. It starts with an understanding of the capacity to spend - a reliable and important indicator of the likelihood to buy because it's focused on discretionary income. Discretionary income refers to money that is left after consumers take care of essentials such as food, clothing, and shelter.

Two households that both have $250,000 in income and that are in the same life stage may in fact have substantially different spending power and patterns depending on their tastes, attitudes, where they live, and their financial asset base. These are the factors that determine what each consumer can or can't afford to buy and what they choose to spend on. The fact is that "birds of a feather” do not always "flock together.”

To be successful, marketers must focus on a combination of assets and discretionary income. It all starts with an understanding of a prospect's ability to purchase. Without this, no amount of persuasive copy, award-winning graphics, or hard-to

-beat offers will yield results. Typical gross household income measures tend to be unreliable and do not effectively target consumers. In addition, most income selects stop at $100,000 - that is, all households with income of more than $100,000 are categorized together. It is simply an unrealistic measure in terms of what people are likely to spend on.

With that in mind, targeting methods must identify access to money - that is, discretionary funds, regardless of income, in order to qualify current and future prospects. Useful tools segment, prioritize and target both current and prospective customers based on their true ability to buy, viewing wealth based in part on liquid asset factors, not just income.

Armed with more specific information, marketers can better target customers, locate more individuals with similar profiles, all with an understanding of each consumer's true ability and propensity to spend. With the advance knowledge of a consumer's capacity to buy discretionary products and by customizing offers and marketing messages to be highly relevant for each audience segment, marketers can more effectively utilize their marketing budget to reach truly worthwhile prospects and increase their marketing ROI.

Echelon Targeting provides a superior measure of consumer spending power to consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, and service providers of all types. Consumer marketers can use Echelon's systems to gain intelligence on customer and prospect discretionary spending capacity and purchase propensity in order to improve their segmentation, targeting, and marketing strategies.

To learn how to capture the unrealized value of your customers and prospects, or to arrange a test of an in-house file, please contact us at 866-788-9677, e-mail us at jkoppenhaver@echelontargeting.com. or visit our web site at echelontargeting.com.

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