Demographic variables

Demography is a study of the human population and then characterising the population based on their socio-economic or cultural differences. This analysis is used mainly by the business company to target their audience with a specific product for that demographies are defined using a few variables. A demographic variable is collected by researchers to describe the nature and distribution of a population sample using statistics. 

Different demographic variables are:

  • Race: Our nations are diversifying even faster than predicted and increased racial and ethnic diversity in almost all the popular cities in the world. And all these races have their distinct beliefs and notions. Thus, companies need to keep in mind this variable when marketing their products.
  • Ethnicity: The ethnicity of a population is defined by the geographical region in which they are residing or originated from. Now geographical locations affect the behaviour of the population along with buying preferences. Thus to grow their sales, companies need to evaluate and understand the population on basis of their location. 
  • Age: Products and services are often customized to different age groups. For example, millennials (born in the 80s-90s) or gen z (born in the 2000s) people can easily adapt to the new gadgets whereas the boomer generation (born between 1946 to 1964) face their share of difficulties in using these new technologies.
  • Gender: Gender is really important in all social processes but there are still gaps in our understanding of demographic behaviour with genders due to the complexities of gender. But with developing new tools and outlooks, we may be able to categorize our demographics based on gender and provide a definite audience for a particular service or product.
  • Family status: It defines if the family consists of a lot of children or working professionals, married or unmarried people. It is a critical variable that has a significant impact on a business strategy as companies need to understand the overall status of the population to view them as their target audience.
  • Income: We know that different products appeal to different income groups and the value of the product is a critical feature that decides if the customer will buy a product or not. For example, People with lower income go to affordable restaurants whereas high-end restaurants cater to people with higher incomes.
  • Education: Education is associated strongly with mortality, fertility and migration experiences. Now sometimes, education is merely used as a proxy for socioeconomic status or even income but even if that’s the case, literate people have their thought processes separated from the illiterate ones. They are more aware and know various concepts, so when targeting an educated demography one should get their facts double-checked.

Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

It is a piece of information when used alone or with some relevant data can identify an individual. Now PII contains two types of identifiers:

  • Direct identifiers: This type of information identifiies an individual uniquely such as passport number, name, address, telephone number, social security number, driver’s license number, bank account number, and fingerprints.
  • Quasi-identifiers: This type of information is used to combine with other quasi-identifiers to obtain information about an individual such as race combined with the date of birth, or nationality.

References:

Family status
Race
Gender