Whole Foods is holding wine tastings. Ikea is pitching apartment furniture to divorced dads. Applebee’s turns into a nightclub after dinner.
These companies are all targeting an increasingly coveted demographic: single Americans.
More than half of U.S. adults are now unmarried — a 125 million strong cohort that spends about $2 trillion on goods and services a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Economist Edward Yardeni calls them Selfies — those who are free to spend selfishly because they’re not saving for college, paying off a mortgage or buying clothes for their kids.
“They’re self-centered by definition,” Yardeni said. “They spend money on themselves or they’re saving it for consumption down the road.”
For decades, companies from Procter & Gamble Co. to Kraft Foods targeted traditional families traveling predictable life stages, from buying homes to having kids to retiring. Marketers focused mostly on mom, who controlled the household budget and decided what her family would buy.
Now they confront a more fragmented and confounding marketplace, where their target customer could be a millennial too focused on career to tie the knot, a proudly single woman in her 30s who privately pities her married pals, or an empty-nester who just got divorced.
“It’s very difficult to target them because there’s so much variety,” said Christopher Lehmann, executive creative director with global brand consultant, Landor Associates. “There’s a danger in thinking of it as one big target audience.”
Though America has been getting steadily more single since the 1970s, the economic upheaval of the past several years has accelerated singlehood.
In September, Yardeni reported that for the first time, more than 50 percent of Americans 16 and older are single. Back when the government started tracking the metric in 1976, 37 percent of adults were unmarried.
Millennials, grappling with a tough job market and stagnant wages, are delaying marriage so they can focus on their careers. That in turn means delaying kids and a house in the suburbs. As a result, they aren’t buying big-ticket items like lawn mowers, washing machines and SUVs. They also eat out a lot and tend not to fill up their shopping carts with a week’s worth of groceries.
Increasing numbers of Baby Boomers are single, too. The divorce rate among people 50 and older doubled between 1990 and 2010, according to the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University. In 2010, about 25 percent of divorces were among adults over 50.
A record number of Americans have never tied the knot, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. In 2012, 20 percent of adults 25 and over had never married, up from 9 percent in 1960.
Brian Way never married. Now 46, the sporting-goods sales executive lives in Denver and has a vacation home in New York’s Adirondacks. Singlehood means buying outdoor gear at Patagonia or a jacket at Nordstrom Inc., rather than searching around for the best deal. Way shops at Whole Foods Market Inc., drinks better wine and can replace his Chevrolet Tahoe a year or two ahead of schedule, rather than driving it into the ground.
“There’s no hesitation when I want to make a purchase,” he said. “Those little hiccups that come along don’t keep me up at night, because I know it’s just me.”
Even as companies struggle to reach singles, they are loath to alienate the 49 percent of married Americans or those in committed relationships. Or, for that matter, people who want to wed but haven’t found a mate.
“You’re not likely to see an ad that says ‘Congratulations, you’re single,’ ” said Anastasiya Pocheptsova, who teaches marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business in College Park. “You always want to compliment the consumer.”
So even though companies now have reams of data to target ever narrower niches, many have adopted an oblique approach. Rather than target singles directly, they’re going after broader categories, such as city dwellers and millennials.
Restaurant chains and grocery stores are less squeamish about targeting singles directly, especially younger ones who tend to snack throughout the day or eat out.
Kraft has responded with “on-the-go” options like the Oscar Mayer P3, a protein pack with cheese, nuts and meat. Whole Foods offers packaged food that’s ready to cook, and customers cooking for one can go home with a single serving.
Ikea has hosted press events featuring bedroom options aimed at divorced fathers whose kids visit a few times a month.
Some Whole Foods locations have in-store tap rooms and wine bars and have hosted speed dating events for “successful singles” ages 25-38.
Been to Applebee’s lately? The chain that fed thousands of suburban families has turned into a singles scene at night, with DJs, karaoke and Ladies Nights. Patrons in their 20s and 30s have taken to calling the joint “bees.”
