New Martini Report Details Affluent Consumers’ Relationship to Finances with Surprising Insights
New York, NY (PRWEB) July 29, 2015 -- Attitudes towards financial organizations, wealth management and financial futures are evolving for Affluents, according to The Martini Report, Volume 3: An In-Depth Perspective on Affluents and Finance. The report was released today by Martini Media, the leader in engaging affluent audiences online, which was recently acquired by Evolve Media, LLC. Third in a series of studies, it features unexpected insights on affluent consumers’ financial goals and digital behaviors. The proprietary study was conducted in collaboration with Ipsos MediaCT, a firm recognized for its expertise in research on affluent consumers and luxury markets.
The Martini Report (Vol. 3: Finance) details the online behavior of three key segments of the Affluent Market: the Hyper Affluent, 3% of Americans with at least $250,000 in annual household income; the Mass Affluent, one quarter of the U.S. population who fall in the $100,000-$249,000 income range; and the Emerging Affluent, aged 18-39, with household income in the $75,000-$249,000 range.
“For Affluents, managing and growing their wealth has always been a high priority, but the most surprising finding of our third Martini Report was how differently each key segment approaches financial decisions,” said Karen Ring, Director, Market Research & Insights at Martini Media, an Evolve Media company. “While millennials are just starting to formulate their investment strategy and prefer to make financial decisions independently through the use of digital resources, their older counterparts place their trust in established financial institutions and are most concerned about estate planning, and saving enough for retirement and their children’s education.”
Key findings include:
• Retirement is a big concern: Affluents fear outliving their retirement savings more than any other financial scenario. As a result, 63% of Affluents wished they had started saving earlier for retirement.
• Affluents worry they are underfunded: A large portion of the Affluent population (70%) cannot accurately estimate how much money they will need for future life events, and only 39% are confident that they have enough money saved for their children’s college education.
• Millennials want to work with innovative financial companies: While 80% of Hyper Affluents prefer to engage with companies they have worked with in the past, only 69% of their younger counterparts share that same level of loyalty. Millennials are more open to working with new companies than Mass and Hyper Affluents. In addition, many large wealth management companies are raising their minimum investment requirements for new clients thereby shutting out younger investors. As a result, millennials are using disruptive technologies to manage their finances.
• Financial product purchases are heavily researched: Affluents spend at least 6 hours in an average month researching financial products across all forms of digital means. Nearly half of Emerging Affluents do their research on tablets and smartphones. Overall, 30% of Affluents spend more than two months researching before completing a transaction.
• Emerging Affluents take a do-it-yourself approach to finance: Affluent millennials are at the forefront of a growing trend of self-directed financial and wealth management. They prefer to manage their money independently, without the use of financial professionals. While 6 out of 10 Hyper Affluents have a high level of trust in financial advisors, only 33% of Emerging Affluents have that same level of trust. They don’t want information pushed to them – they want to seek it themselves and make their own decisions.
• Digital is a top influencer: Digital media are cited more widely as influencing financial decisions than traditional ones. Emerging Affluents are more receptive to third-party content, like user reviews and website articles, while Hyper Affluents prefer to use the brand’s website as a digital resource.
Approaches towards wealth management vary for Affluents, and marketers need to provide targeted guidance for achieving goals like funding life cycle events, address concerns about trust in financial professionals and recognize that millennials will rely on different tools than other Affluents.
“Affluents are worried about their financial futures like everyone else,” said Geoff Schiller, Chief Revenue Officer at Evolve Media, parent company of TotallyHer, CraveOnline, and Martini Media. “It is clear that just because they are affluent, doesn’t mean that aren’t looking for help. It’s important for financial advertisers to use digital media to help address those concerns and foster and facilitate trust between Affluents and financial institutions.”
Methodology: The survey was conducted online by Ipsos MediaCT from January 5-12, 2015 among 882 adults aged 18+ with at least $75,000 in annual household income; the sample included 145 Hyper Affluent consumers, defined as those with at least $250,000 in annual household income. The data were weighted to reflect U.S. Census figures to ensure representative results. A full White Paper detailing the findings is available upon request.
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About Evolve Media LLC.
Evolve Media is a publisher of leading enthusiast lifestyle destinations for men and women. Leveraging proprietary advertising and publishing technologies, as well as hundreds of talented content professionals, Evolve Media offers premium and engaging content to its readers, while offering marketers the tools needed to execute custom, content-led marketing solutions that reach its audience of over 95 million people globally each month. Our mission is simple; we create the content people are passionate about. Follow Evolve Media on Twitter at @EvolveMedia_LLC and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/evolvemediallcpublishing.
About Martini Media:
Acquired by Evolve Media in 2015, Martini Media specializes in helping the world’s most prestigious brands engage the most affluent and influential online. Leveraging proprietary insights on how and where the affluent consume media, as well as unmatched access to the passion-based, niche sites this audience interacts with, Martini provides highly efficient, targeted reach into the affluent market. Headquartered in San Francisco, Martini has offices in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and London. Visit http://www.martinimediainc.com to learn more.
About Ipsos MediaCT
Ipsos MediaCT is the market research specialization within Ipsos built to reach, engage and more effectively understand today’s digitally-driven consumer in the fast moving media, content and technology space. We work with leading companies in technology, entertainment and all sectors of media – TV, online, print, mobile, outdoor, radio – helping owners and advertisers to better understand different audiences, the content they consume, the channels they use to consume it and the technology they use to discover, talk about and access this content. Ipsos MediaCT is a specialist division within Ipsos, one of the world’s largest market research agencies. Ipsos has offices in 86 countries, generating global revenues of €1.7124 billion (2.274 B$) in 2013. Alongside media, content & technology, Ipsos has specialist practices in advertising, loyalty, marketing and public opinion research. Visit http://www.ipsos-na.com/media to learn more.
Annie Carone, Evolve Media, http://www.evolvemediallc.com/home, +1 (213) 415-8263, [email protected]
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