New research may now back what many of us already believed, the idea that a person’s stage in life  is more important in determining their behavior than demographics.  At least this is what a recent study by Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC), the Hallmark Channel and E-Poll Market Research has determined.

These life stages are broken into eight major categories.  The categories consist of teens, college students, recent graduates, single no kids, new nesters, established families, married couples with no children and empty nesters.

The study looked specifically at media habits. While looking at people that fell into the same stage in their life they tended to possess similar attitudes and behaviors but those attitudes and behaviors varied from other stages.  For example, here are a few of the study findings. 

And new nesters value television more than other groups, and have a lot of TV content coming into the home, per the study. As a group they are most likely to have digital/satellite channels, and they place the highest value on devices that filter video content such as DVRs, video-on-demand services and DVD players. They use those devices to locate and display family-appropriate entertainment and screen out unwanted content, the study found.

In contrast, the study notes that childless couples are more engaged with friends and activities outside the home, ranking higher than new nesters in such activities as travel, exercise and spending time with friends. When they do watch TV, dramas, not family fare, tend to be a higher priority, per the study.

Continued research on these stages could provide greater insight for marketers, positively influencing their ability to reach consumers.

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