Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Who Are We?



The following was posted by the Buzzards Bay Regatta on their Facebook page today to persuade potential advertisers and sponsors that sailors are an "important market" for their products.

Did you know that sailors are one of the most attractive consumers for both local businesses and global brands?
•95% are college educated; 50% have graduate degrees
•90% are professionals or managers
•Average HH Income – $240,000
•Average Net Worth – $1.4 million
•95% own their homes
•Travel extensively, are active and computer savvy

I have no idea where BBR obtained this data. Presumably some kind of market research survey. I wonder how "sailor" was defined in the survey? Did it include all youth sailors and all retired sailors? Did it include windsurfers and dinghy sailors? Did it include the guys and gals who hitch a ride on other people's boats for Wednesday night beer can racing? Did it include all the users of community sailing centers? Or did they just poll yacht owners or yacht club members? I have no idea.

How does this tally with your perception of the demographics of the people you sail with?

11 comments:

Mike said...

I’ve just done my own survey.
95% of the ‘sailors’ questioned told me to piss off and mind my own business.

The remaining 5% told me to get the drinks in and then they would tell me about the time they were becalmed with Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink…..

Baydog said...

Eh. And we wonder why sometimes people think you're a snob if you say you're a sailor and belong to a Yacht Club.

O Docker said...

My chief counsel, financial staff, and media advisors are all telling me not to comment on this post.

bonnie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bonnie said...

Let's just say my frostbite sailing circle is actually more of a square. Drysuits cost too much.

cnix said...

Sounds like the same data that's in the 2011 Sailing Market State of the Industry Report by Sailing World Magazine.

http://www.sailingworld.com/sites/all/files/_attachments_articles/2011_sailing_industry_study_-_with_2010_data.ppt.pdf

Tillerman said...

Sorry cnix, I couldn't see this data in the link in your comment (interesting as it was.) Where is it?

cnix said...

Didn't realize blogger doesn't auto link URLs.

Also didn't realize blogger doesn't let you edit comments. =\

try this

cnix said...

oh crap, you're right, that's the wrong link. There's another pdf that they published alongside that report that had the demographic data. I'll be back. Sorry for the confusion. =\

cnix said...

here's what I was thinking of, but it's a newer version since I saw it in eh, November of 2011 maybe...

Sailing World Brand Overview

The numbers you're looking for are on page 6 and even higher than what you published.

Tillerman said...

Thanks. I think those are actually the demographics for readers of Sailing World. Not exactly the same thing as all sailors, but maybe not all that different. I guess that is some validation that BBR's figures for average household income and net worth for sailors are in the right ballpark.

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