Solo the Pitch, So High the Sales Potential

Single-person households are becoming more popular. The statistics do differ widely across country. The Economist cites these trends and predictions:

• In the U.S., 15% of U.S. adults live by themselves, up from 4% in 1950. Half of U.S. adults are unmarried, up from 22% in 1950. 
• In 2020, almost half of Swedish households will be solos. 
• In the United Arab Emirates, 60% of women over age 30 are unmarried, compared to 20% in 1995. 
• Worldwide, the total number of solos will increase by 20% over the next eight years. 

     Consider, then, that the shopper walking into your store, even if accompanied by others, might be living alone. How you use this consideration depends on what you’re selling, why the shopper’s solo, and how this affects the shopper’s lifestyle:

• Women are marrying later than in the past because they have more professional development opportunities. And with more single woman, there are more single men. These consumers will pay for convenience. In Brazil, whose current president is herself unmarried, sales of ready-made meals have more than doubled over the last five years. 
• With improvements in health care, there are more aged widows and widowers. Important to these shoppers are aisles and websites which are easy to navigate plus signage and online text which omit small fonts and subtle color differences. 
• Social attitudes have moved in the direction of friends with benefits, in which sexual relations don’t depend on enduring relationships. Products and services that claim to perpetuate, or least refresh, physical attractiveness are marketable when one is continuing to seek hookups. 

     Some singles satisfy any needs for companionship by socializing with friends or by volunteering. Others suffer from loneliness. Even with the current abundance of internet-based social media, and perhaps because of internet-based social media, more American consumers say they’re socially isolated than the percentage of consumers saying this twenty years ago.
     That’s the report from researchers at University of Iowa, Stanford University, and University of British Columbia. Their research also provides guidance for selling to the lonely: These shoppers are drawn to products which, like the shopper, are yearning to belong. More specifically, consumers who are lonely are highly interested in products endorsed by a vocal minority of other consumers. At the start of the purchase process, they’ll want to look at the product choice praised by 20% of consumers before looking at the choice praised by 80% of consumers.

Click below for more: 
Get Small with Big Convenience 
Help Seniors to Shop Early 
Peek Into Bathroom Rituals 
Let Lonely Consumers Know They Belong