Principles of Marketing, 17/e

The Demographic and Economic Environments

The Demographic Environment

Author Comment

Changes in demographics mean changes in markets, so they are very important to marketers. We first look at the biggest demographic trend—the changing age structure of the population.

Demography is the study of human populations in terms of size, density, location, age, gender, race, occupation, and other statistics. The demographic environment is of major interest to marketers because it involves people, and people make up markets. The world population is growing at an explosive rate. It now exceeds 7.3 billion people and is expected to grow to more than 8 billion by the year 2030.5 The world’s large and highly diverse population poses both opportunities and ...