The End of Demographics?

CHICAGO-”It’s no longer demographics,” Tom Buxton said matter-of-factly to a room full of retail industry attendees at the International Council of Shopping Centers Midwest Idea Exchange on Thursday. “It doesn’t matter how many people are in those rings drawn around your store, and their age, sex, race and even income doesn’t matter either, because if they aren’t your customers, they aren’t going to do you any good.”

Buxton, founder and head of the Buxton Co. in Ft. Worth, was the lead speaker in a panel discussion called “Picking A+ Locations Every Time,” and in some senses, the panel served to promote his company’s consulting services, which claim a high level of psychographic understanding of the American consumer. The other two panelists—Rick Claes of EatZi’s Market & Bakery and Bryan Spain of Dave & Buster’s, both headquartered in Dallas—have been clients of Buxton’s, and in fact all three used to work together at Tandy Corp., parent of Radio Shack.

Still, the three were able to offer the crowd a wealth of information about a retail site-selection process that’s extremely data-intensive and which has yielded results for the two retail panelists. Buxton began by explaining that his company’s approach to consumer psychographics had its origins in work he did at Tandy. “We had 13,000 stores back then, more than McDonald’s, but too many of them never made a profit, even though they were in locations with similar demographics as profitable stores. Why? Ultimately, that led me to understanding that demographics isn’t really what a retailer needs to know. It needs to know the lifestyle characteristics of the people in the area.”