Maritz Research conducted its
holiday tablet poll of 2,485 consumers in November, but just released an analysis of the data. The firm then broke down the tablet market into four different types of tablet customers based on the responses--low-end buyers, newcomers, single-minded buyers, and tablet-committed buyers.
There are layers of marketing data baked into these profiles to help tablet makers try to add a little more of that secret sauce that's been selling so many iPads and Kindle Fires, but what I found most interesting is that statistically, three of the four types are dominated by women.
In other words, the profile of the average low-end buyer, tablet newcomer, and single-minded buyer (someone only interested in one particular tablet, most often the iPad) are all women in their forties. Only the tablet-committed buyer--someone open to different brands and knowledgeable about at least three or more--is more likely to be a man. Here's Maritz's full demographic breakdown of each segment:
The household income of all four groups is roughly around $70,000 on average. Even the low-end buyers don't have a much lower average household income, at $62,000 a year.
Not surprisingly, given the holiday shopping hype around tablets, the analysis bodes well for the overall tablet market. It finds 6.2 percent of consumers have purchased a tablet in the past 3 months and 6.8% intend to purchase one in the next 3 months, with a projected 10 percent increase in sales. Also, most consumers fall in the tablet-committed buyers category with its slight male majority. That means a growing number of consumers are becoming more aware of more tablet brands-- perhaps because their mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and girlfriends are so excited about them.
