Forecasting & Millennial Behaviors

This week I am tidying up some loose ends. After last week’s blog about Spring, I have decided that I will not be going into the weather forecasting business for a while. For those of you in the Rockies and in the Midwest, my notes in last week’s blog about the coming of Spring were, as it turns out, a little premature what with the snowstorms that rolled through last week. Hope the weather has cheered up some, and it is starting to look more like Spring.

In other news the Wine Marketing Council restated their results on the amount of wine Millennials are buying and drinking. While the Millennials are still great supporters of wine (and thank you for that) Boomers are drinking and purchasing more wine. It is obvious that times are changing, but for the moment Boomers are still your biggest audience. It will be interesting to see what happens next year as Millennials are closing the gap.

Speaking of Millennials, Nielsen has some interesting information about Millennials and their media habits, which Nielsen calls “different and distinct.” They divide the Millennials (18-34 year olds) into three groups:

• Dependent Adults (living in someone else’s home)
• On Their Own (living in their own home without children)
• Starting a Family (living in their own home with children)

When it comes to technology, 78% of On Their Own Millennials have subscriptions based video on-demand services such as Netflix or Hulu, which Nielsen says is 14 percentage points higher than Dependent Adults and 20 percentage points higher than Starting a Family Millennials.

Radio seems to work for Millennials in all stages, according to Nielsen, radio reaches 90% of Millennials who are Dependent Adults and 89% of the On Their Own group. The numbers rise to 92% for the Starting a Family group. Nielsen also noted that the Starting a Family group contains a higher percentage of Hispanics, who tend to be heavy users of radio.

A tip of the glass from me to you