What Walmart moms can tell us about the swing vote

Ten middle-class Walmart moms from the St. Louis area were gathered together in September 2010 for a focus group and paid $75 to answer questions that might offer clues to what the Walmart moms segment - estimated to account for 16 percent of all U.S. voters - would do concerning this month’s midterm elections. According to Todd C. Frankel’s September 17, 2010, article “Listening to the Walmart Moms in St. Louis,” in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Walmart moms were the coveted group of swing voters for 2010 just as soccer moms and NASCAR dads were the popular brains to pick in elections past.

As corporations seek to understand their consumer base, certain demographic groups could prove useful in matters beyond the scope of marketing and sales.

Walmart’s domination in discount retailing draws in consumers of all walks of life, but it seems that in St. Louis - a major city in one of the nation’s most notorious swing states - moms who shop at Walmart are not so different from one another. What did these Walmart moms have in common? They had young children at home. They had moderate political leanings - whether left or right. And they had each shopped at Walmart in the past month, suggesting frugality and a common touch.

The focus group, one of three like it (the other two were held in Denver and Philadelphia), was paid for by Walmart; videotaped; and broadcast via a live, closed-circuit videofeed to reporters and political analysts in Washington, D.C.

The moderator, Nicole Yakatan, began simply: How do you feel about the way things are going in the country? Their one-word answers were, in a word, bleak: unsettling; uneasy; stagnated; awful; sad; sucks; divided. Their concerns were that the state of the nation was only getting worse, as the gap between the rich and the poor widens, effectively wiping out the middle class.

The respondents’ attitude toward politics was disenchanted at best. They felt cut off from national politics, were ambivalent toward President Obama and wanted nothing to do with the constant commotion in Congress. Instead, these moms have a focus on local issues, such as better employment opportunities in Missouri and improved state schools.

Could researchers get answers from Facebook Questions?

Facebook has announced the launch of Facebook Questions, a tool designed to allow users to post polls and questions about subjects of their choice, soliciting their friends - or the entire Facebook population - for information and opinions. The service has gone through beta testing and will be further developed with the test group’s feedback in mind; a release date is expected in late 2010.

Whether Facebook Questions will serve as a casual form of research or a more recreational “What song is it that goes X?” or “Which shoes looks better with this belt?” remains to be seen, but company and brand Facebook pages will also have the ability to gauge how consumers feel about new products or potential launches and also establish a forum where users and brand fans can be heard  right from the comfort of their own Facebook profiles.
Facebook Questions will appear on the user’s profile and will also appear in the user’s friends’ News Feed, so answers are anticipated to be personalized and especially relevant to the poster. Photos can also be added if the user is trying to identify something, such as a type of flower in their garden.

The “social” aspect of Facebook Questions comes in the form of question suggestions and the helpful/unhelpful checkbox. Whenever polls or questions have been answered, users can post them to their own or their friends’ profiles, and if a user sees a question for which a friend might have an answer, the user can “suggest” that question for the friend. Facebook Questions will also have a feature similar to ones seen on Digg, Amazon.com and Yahoo! Answers, where the users viewing or responding to the question can (anonymously) mark whether they found a respondent’s answer helpful or unhelpful. The most helpful answers will rise to the top. Users are also able to “follow” questions, so that a notification will be sent when another user responds to the question.

Research reveals the components for happiness among Americans

It seems money can buy happiness after all, as the happiest Americans are extroverts with an annual household income of $75,000 or more (82 percent very or somewhat happy), according to a study from Keirsey Research, San Mateo, Calif. The least-happy Americans are the unemployed (46 percent), closely followed by those who are separated but not divorced (48 percent).

Keirsey Research asked over 3,900 Americans to rate their level of happiness, considering such factors as household income, love, work and family. “If survival is the primary human goal, happiness comes in at a close second,” said Kip Parent, CEO, Keirsey Research. “It is such a multifaceted emotion that is impacted by numerous variables, from personality type to age to parenting status.”
Individual happiness was also correlated with the following factors:

Personality. Sixty-three percent of Americans rate themselves as very or somewhat happy. Extroverts (74 percent), however, are much happier than introverts (56 percent).

Wealth. In general, the higher the household income, the happier the individual: 72 percent of those with an annual household income of $75,000 or more are very or somewhat happy, compared to 59 percent of those with an annual household income of $50,000 or less.
Love. Not surprisingly, being engaged promotes above-average happiness (71 percent very or somewhat happy). Those who are separated but not divorced are least happy when it comes to love (48 percent).

Age. Americans get progressively happier as they get older, with one exception. Happiness takes a dip between the ages of 35-44 (58 percent are very or somewhat happy), when parental and career pressures are typically at their peak.

Family. Empty-nesters are most happy (73 percent very or somewhat happy), while those who are divorced and sharing custody are least happy (56 percent). Individuals who do not have children cite average happiness (62 percent).

Education. In most cases, more education means more happiness. There was no difference, however, between the happiness of those with a Bachelor’s degree and those with a graduate degree (68 percent very or somewhat happy).

Politics. Democrats and Republicans are equally happy (roughly 70 percent very or somewhat happy), while Green Party affiliates are the least happy (52 percent).