Every region possesses some particular characteristics based on the people who reside in it.
These characteristics can reflect the region's economy, social behavior, social customs, geographical location, commerce, industrialization, religion, and other things.
The term 'demographics' is in essence a shortened form of what we can call 'population characteristics'.
Demographics include age, per capita income, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational and academic level of the people, value of ownership (that includes properties and assets like homes, apartments, garden and such others), status of employment and even the topography of the region.
Demographics find its use in market research, opinion research, political research, and assessment of the changing trends of consumer behavior and its patterns.
But demographics is best utilized by marketing managers, as the various characteristics of the people reflect their tastes and give an idea of the probability of the sales returns of a launched product in a given area.
Demographics can be called an art and a science.
Unlike demography, which puts emphasis on biological processes such as population dynamics, demographics try to grasp what people think and what they are willing to buy.
Demographics can be studied under the following heads: 1) Demographic variables - the groupings of the consumers and other such communities done by social and marketing analysts.
The most frequently used ones are: age, sex, sexual orientation, family size, household size, family life cycle, income, occupation, education, home ownership, socioeconomic status, religion and nationality.
2) Demographic profiles - definition of several demographic variables.
3) Demographic trends - predictability of the demographic shifts.