Those Avid Improvers, Theater-Avoiders, Etc.

While everyone and his brother seems to be making home improvements these days, a Scarborough Research study finds the market has a demographic sweet spot: home owners in their 30s and 40s. Those in their 30s "are 19 percent more likely than all home owners to have remodeled their home during the past year." One-third of them completed a remodeling project last year. Home owners in their 40s accounted for 26 percent of all remodeling projects in the past year, and they're 14 percent more likely than home owners in general to have undertaken such a task. Though about half of all home owners are over 50, that cohort is underrepresented in the home-improvement market.It's not that they're vain, I'm sure, but men are buying skincare products at a brisk clip. A report by The NPD Group says men's spending in the category rose at more than twice the pace of women's (13 percent vs. 6 percent) in 2004 vs. 2003. Nonetheless, sales for the entire men's category ($59 million) would amount to a mere rounding error on the female side of the market ($2.1 billion).When companies aren't hiring, we tend to see this as a weakness in demand for labor. A report by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas points to a different culprit: weakness on the supply side. Companies want to hire, it says, but can't find the people they need. In a poll of corporate human-resource executives, 44 percent said they didn't hire as many people as planned in the first half of this year due to a lack of suitable candidates. The shortage was especially pronounced in healthcare, specialty manufacturing, information technology and accounting.When a product's technology gets more sophisticated each year, you expect people to feel the product itself is improving. But while that may be true of consumer electronics, it seems not to apply to movies. Despite all of Hollywood's technical advances, 47 percent of respondents to an Associated Press/AOL survey said they believe movies are generally "getting worse." That easily tops the 33 percent who think movies are "getting better." Fielded by Ipsos-Public Affairs, the poll found people using technology to avoid the movie theater. Asked whether they prefer to watch movies in a theater or via DVD player, VCR or pay-per-view, just 22 percent said they'd rather go to the theater, vs. 73 percent opting for the at-home approach. Whatever the reason, one-fourth of adults haven't darkened a movie theater's door in the past 12 months (see the chart). Perhaps people would go more often, with kids in tow, if they thought the onscreen stars were a wholesome influence. As it is, just 24 percent said they view today's movie stars as positive role models for children; 69 percent said the stars are negative role models.

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Those Avid Improvers, Theater-Avoiders, Etc.

Mark Dolliver

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Mark Dolliver