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Preference July 23 2007 This page looks at what is sometimes bundled as the 'pink' demographic - gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people online. It covers - introduction population size distribution income and spending power behaviour introduction The wired GLBT population is of interest because it has been characterised (somewhat dismissively) as the "marketer's dream audience". It also demonstrates the need for caution in considering problematical claims about figures and behaviour. It has become fashionable to write about a discrete 'GLBT demographic' - one that is presumed to be homogenous, rich and passive. Forrester shrilled that it was uniquely "different" and "a lucrative niche market", noting estimates that US gay and lesbian consumers account for US$340 billion in annual spending power. Advertising Age disagreed, claiming that the spend was around US$514 billion. Modalis Research Technologies said the GLBT spend is valued at "over $450 billion". There have been similar claims in offline studies such as Steven Kates' Twenty Million New Customers: Understanding Gay Men’s Consumer Behavior (Binghampton: Haworth 1998) and Grant Lukenbill's Untold Millions: Secret Truths About Marketing to Gay & Lesbian Consumers (New York: HarperCollins 1995). A 2001 study by US market researchers Witeck-Combs & Harris Interactive contradicts an influential 1998 Greenfield report and claims increasing ecommerce activity by members of the GLBT demographics. "We have long observed gay affinity for the Web, and the numbers keep soaring". Witeck's 2000 report confirmed that gays and lesbians are 'information-hungry' and disproportionately favor use of the internet and online communication. We would be more impressed by that study if there weren't concerns about the size of the sample (137 people of 2,525 adults) and apparent assumptions about a uniform and passive demographic, explored in Alexandra Chasin's preachy but intelligent Selling Out: The Gay & Lesbian Market Goes To Market (New York: St Martins 2000). In practice the premises of such studies are problematical. The May 2000 issue of Demography, the journal of the Population Association of America, cautioned that demographically, this is a hard population to target and analyze. Data on sexual orientation is not as easily available as information on race, gender and age. Witeck was unchastened by criticisms, promoting the vision of an untapped zombie market in Business Inside Out: Tapping Millions of Brand-Loyal Gay Consumers (Chicago: Kaplan Publishing 2006). population size How big is the online GLBT market in Australasia and overseas? The answer is that no-one knows, although that has not inhibited pitches to investors and potential advertisers. US researchers Computer Economics claimed in 2000 that "between 2001 and 2005, the number of gay and lesbian internet users will grow from 13.5 million to 22.4 million" - arguably a significant underestimate - with projections of growth of 120% in the Middle East. The latter is from a very low threshold: while the online GLBT population in South America was forecast to increase from 106,000 in 2000 to 347,000 in 2005 that in Africa was predicted to climb to 59,250 and in the Middle East it would soar from 9,200 to 11,200 in 2005. The US-based PlanetOut and GayCom sites have each claimed one million members, with a collective market reach of over 3.8m individuals. There have been similar claims from EU and Australian GLBT portals or dating sites. As we have noted in discussing online social spaces such claims are often self-interested and caution is appropriate in assessing whether all members of particular online communities are active or indeed are discrete individuals. Viacom has claimed that around 6.5% of the 105 million households in the US have "at least one gay clicker" (which given US household structure is probably an underestimate). It argues that "22% of partnered lesbians and 5% of partnered gays" have children at home, around 70% percent of whom are under the age of 17 and many from previous relationships. That is consistent with the claim that 20% of US men in gay partnerships and 30% of women in lesbian partnerships have previously been married or are currently married. Go to other studies and you will find contradictory claims that The majority of gay and lesbian households are comprised of what the Census Bureau coined "DINKS" - Dual Income, No Kids. Only eight percent of same-sex partners have children in the household, while 35% of opposite-sex partners do. Simmons' research comparing US gay consumers to the national index of consumers reported that its group was 71% male and 29% female, twice as likely as the national index to be professionals or managers and have a household income over US$60K (indeed twice as likely to have household income over US$250K), twice as likely to have a degree, three times more likely to be online than the average consumer, four times as likely to spend over US$150 on long distance and twice as likely to spend US$250 on mobile phone services. distribution One of the sillier development theories at the end of the 1990s was the claim that attracting a GL (but apparently not BT) population to your city or region offered a quick fix for securing investment in innovation and growth of high technology industries. That form of objectification, arguably the industry policy version of Queer Eye For A Straight Guy, built on research in works such as the 2001 study by Richard Florida & Gary Gates on The Importance of Diversity to High-Technology Growth and paper by Dan Black & Gary Gates on Why Do Gay Men Live in San Francisco?. Florida's problematical The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community & Everyday Life (New York: Basic 2003) - "why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race" - has encouraged civic boosterism such as the comment by one US civic statesman that "where gay households abound, geeks follow" and recipes that include "take the guy with the tattoos seriously" and "Hire his boyfriend". It has been hailed, inevitably, in Salon, Harvard Business Review and FastCompany, and as tartly questioned by 'just add bandwidth and stir' sceptics such as the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. Works such as the US Gay & Lesbian Atlas (New York: Urban Institute Press 2004) by Gary Gates and Jason Ost offer a somewhat more nuanced view of clustering and geekdom, reporting that same-sex unmarried partners were present in 99.3% of all US counties and that contrary to views that GLBT = young, rich and hip around 20% of people in a same-sex couple were at least 55 years old (with a higher proportion in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming). There has been no comparable major study of distribution in Australia, New Zealand and the EU. However, it is clear that the GLBT population - wired or otherwise - is not restricted to chic metropolitan centres and is not necessarily living in upmarket broadband parks. income and spending power Assumptions that GLBT people are wealthy (and have a higher disposable income because they have disposed of kids) have rightly been questioned. Amy Gluckman & Betsy Reed's 'The Gay Marketing Moment', in Homo Economics (New York: Routledge 1997), queried the self-interested nature of claims by some GLBT marketers. Lee Badgett, University of Massachusetts professor in economics, exploded the myth of 'gay affluence' in a 1998 study suggesting that gay men earn less money on an individual basis than their hetero counterparts. In Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians & Gay Men (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 2001) and earlier 32 page Income Inflation: The Myth of Affluence among Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Americans paper she noted that much market research is based on a small self-selected subgroup of GLBT consumers skewed towards people with high incomes and high levels of education. As a result of using this biased sample of people who are online and use gay Web sites, the companies conducting the study have found what they were looking for — gay people with unusually high incomes and spending. But a number of credible scientific studies that used data from random samples of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual people find the opposite result. Gay people and gay couples do not have higher average incomes than heterosexual people. A perspective is provided by Gary Becker's The Economics of Discrimination (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1971) and Claudia Goldin's Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (New York: Oxford Uni Press 1990). In 2003 a paper by Nathan Berg & Donald Lien on Measuring the Effect of Sexual Orientation on Income: Evidence of Discrimination? Suggested that gay men in the US earn 22% less than similarly qualified men of the heterosexual persuasion, in contrast to lesbians (who on average earn 30% more than straight women). That was consistent with the 2001 study by Dan Black, Hoda Makar, Seth Sanders & Lowell Taylor on The Effects of Sexual Orientation on Earnings and the 2005 Selling Us Short: How Social Security Privatization Will Affect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Americans report (PDF), which comments that LGBT Americans, on average, have lower incomes than their heterosexual counterparts, which translates into lower Social Security benefits when they retire. In addition, same-sex couples are not eligible for Social Security's spousal and survivor benefits provisions, making the LGBT community disproportionately vulnerable ... There is a widespread myth that gay people are economically advantaged compared to heterosexuals. U.S. Census data and other national surveys indicate the opposite. In fact, gay and bisexual men earn anywhere from 13 percent to 32 percent less than heterosexual men Berg & Lien problematically ask whether gay men "settle for earning less" because in the absence of children they can "actively choose leisure over income and savings", whereas high earnings among lesbians might be attributable to employer perceptions that they will not stop working at any point in their careers to raise children, so that "making one's lesbian status public may be an especially credible signal of loyalty or workforce attachment". Kirk Snyder in The Lavender Road to Success: The Career Guide for the Gay Community (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press 2003) noted that 30% of over 300 GL university alumni said they had experienced verbal or physical abuse at work because of their sexual orientation, with 54% considering that being gay had a negative impact on their overall careers. Supposedly those who were open about their sexual orientation earned 50% higher wages than those who were not, arguably a reflection of personality rather than preference or discrimination. and behaviour Affluent or otherwise, it is unclear whether membership of a GLBT demographic makes an appreciable difference to much online behaviour. The problematical Witeck survey in 2001 claimed to uncover a sharp jump with 32% of LGBT Internet users now stating they use the Internet for more than 21 hours per week (apart from email), compared with a minor decline to 17% among non-gay users. In April 2000, one-quarter (25%) of LGBT respondents disclosed using the Internet more than 21 hours per week (excluding email) compared with 18% of non-gay Internet users. It went on to comment that over one-quarter (28%) of LGBT respondents conducted their banking transactions online in the last three months, as compared with 21% of non-gay web users. Similarly, a 7% gap exists between LGBT and non-gay respondents who took part in online auctions over the past three months (26% v 19%, respectively). LGBT respondents are also slightly more likely to make online purchases for goods and services than their non-gay counterparts (63% vs 59%). The newest findings validate the power of the Internet to promote gay consumer spending and to transform the potential for e-commerce. The LGBT market appears to signal a bellwether, enabling gay households to find welcome, safety, convenience and service online. Greenfield's study claimed that 78% of US gay online users prefer to buy from companies that advertise to the gay market 71% of US gay online users have made credit card purchases online 43% of US gay online users identify Gay.com as their favorite site Given survey composition and the ambiguity of terms, they would say that, wouldn't they. Broader-based studies suggest that the 'favourite' site is likely to be AOL home page. The October 2001 opuscommgroup.com report claimed that the median combined household income of US gay couples was US$65,000 (around 60% higher than the median income of US$40,800). 79.8% voted in the 2000 presidential election (compared to 49% of the general public voting in the 1996 election) and 68.8% are registered Democrats. In Australia the Sydney Star Observer claims that the average income of its readers is $48,482 per annum. 58% supposedly have a tertiary qualification, 26% own/manage a business and a further 37.3% work in professions. As of 1998 48.8% owned a computer and 35.8% were online. (In line with the overall population that figure would now be significantly higher.) 25.6% had purchased goods or services online during the preceding month, with an average spend of $575. 36.7% have used the net for online banking; 16.5% do so "occasionally" and 20.2% do so "regularly". A 2001 Forrester report claimed that the online GLBT population in the EU was more likely to book travel online (and spend up big) than non-GLBT counterparts. 41% had booked travel on the net (reference 28% of the overall population). Forrester claimed, in line with comments noted above, that around 3.5% of online travel bookers are gay or lesbian and this group will research almost US$2.9 billion in travel products on the Internet in 2001. Members of this group are, on average, three years younger than their straight counterparts. They also earn more, are better educated, and are more willing to pay for premium services. Gay and lesbian consumers also enjoy shopping online and using new consumer technologies. In 2007 InformationWeek embraced the problematical claim that Excluding e-mail, nearly twice as many gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals than heterosexuals said they're online between 24 and 168 hours per week Drawing on a 2006 survey by Witeck-Combs and Harris Interactive (267 LGB adults of a 2,541 population, with a variety of weightings) it claimed that Non-heterosexuals use online social networks MySpace and Friendster significantly more often than heterosexuals .... In addition, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals use other well-known Web sites such as YouTube, Craigslist, and personal blogs more than heterosexuals. Excluding e-mail, nearly twice as many GLB individuals than heterosexuals said they're online between 24 and 168 hours per week. ... Fully 33% of non-heterosexuals surveyed said they visited MySpace weekly, compared with 28% of heterosexuals. On Friendster, the numbers were 11% and 4%, respectively. More than one in three GLB adults visit their favorite blogs everyday, compared with less than one in five heterosexuals. In addition, 27% of non-heterosexuals spend at least one hour or less per week on YouTube, compared with 22% of heterosexuals. For Craigslist, the numbers were 20% and 13%, respectively. As with earlier work by the survey partners there are questions about population size and composition, survey methodology and data interpretation. The figures for blog use, for example are inconsistent with larger scale studies of who is creating and reading blogs. For perspectives on online environments and behaviour see the Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality (New York: Peter Lang 2007) edited by Kate O'Riordan & David Phillips, the 2004 Cruising and connecting online: the use of gay chat sites by gay men in Sydney and Melbourne by Dean Murphy, Patrick Rawstorne, Martin Holt & Dermot Ryan, Getting It On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality & Embodied Identity (Binghamton: Haworth 2004) by John Edward Campbell, Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 2002) by Lori Kendall, Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia (Durham: Duke Uni Press 2003) edited by Chris Berry & Fran Martin and Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Community, 1940s-1970s (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 2006) by Martin Meeker. |