FERMENTATION Wine Blog Reader Survey Results

The survey taken last week of FERMENTATION readers yielded some interesting results. I have a pretty good picture of my readers' demographics. For example:

GENDER
Males:    76%
Female  24%

AGE
21-30    21%
31-40    24%
41-50    29%
51-60    18%
61-70      8%
70+        -1%

HOUSEHOLD INCOME
Up To $25K              6%
$25-$50K                 9%
$50K – $75K           13%
$75K – $100K         20%
$100K – $150K       23%
$150K – $200K       15%
$200K – $500K       13%
$500K -$1mil            1%
$1mil+                      1%

EDUCATION LEVEL
High School Degree            9%
Junior College Degree        3%
Four Year Degree             52%
Post Graduate Degree     31%
phD                                    5%

MARRIAGE
Married    66%
Single      34%

WORK IN OR AROUND THE WINE INDUSTRY
Yes    62%
No     38%

In this demographic breakdown you get a picture of the average FERMENTATION reader as a married middle aged man with a college degree making around $75K to $150K per year. Interestingly, this sounds a lot like me.

But it's that last statistic, about working or not in the wine industry, that is really interesting. As I noted in an earlier post, the percentage of readers that work in the wine industry has increased nearly 25% since I took this survey 3 years ago. The reasons are obvious. Simply look at my content. But even more interesting is the differences between industry readers and non-industry readers.

THE AGE DIFFERENCE (yes=works in industry)
Age 

THE EDUCATION DIFFERENCE (yes=works in industry)

Education 

THE INCOME DIFFERENCE (yes=works in industry)

Income 

THE DAILY DRINKING DIFFERENCE (yes=works in the industry)

Drink 

THE MEDIA CONSUMPTION DIFFERENCE (yes=works in industry)

Publications 

Turns out that those who don't work in or around the wine industry tend to make more money, tend to have a higher education level and tend to be older. However, those in the industry drink are more likely to drink on a daily basis. And of course industry types tend to read more wine publications more often.

THE GENDER GAP
And what about a gender gap? My women readers tend to be slightly younger than the men, they tend to make less money, they are less likely to drink every day, women are much less likely to own more than 300 bottles of wine, they tend to pay less for their wine, they are much less likely to read this blog on a daily basis, and they are much more likely to read Food & Wine Magazine and Bon Appetit than are my male readers.

Click here to see all the raw results of the FERMENTATION Reader Survey for yourself.

And once again, I want to thank everyone who took the survey.


3 Responses

  1. jamie goode - October 21, 2009

    Very interesting.
    But you could argue that the problem with surveys is that people who choose to answer them are a selected population – and this automatically skews the results to a degree.
    So you have a good view of the portion of your demographic that tends to answer surveys.

  2. Tom Wark - October 21, 2009

    Jamie:
    How are you? You’re point is well taken. I had over 280 people take the survey. I’m pretty happy with this sample. However, you could argue that these result reflect the activities of people with time on their hands!!
    Cheers,
    Tom…

  3. Phil - October 22, 2009

    Awww, you didn’t put us in as one of the media outlets? Jamie’s point is well-taken, but that, in part, is what the margin of error is for. As long as you are aware of the potential problems of having your “more-involved” readers taking the survey, there isn’t much else you can really do.


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