Over the past year my presentations at conventions and articles in our Leisure eNewsletter have discussed the social stratification trend of location-based entertainment spending –spending by higher income households is growing to be a larger and larger share of all such spending.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released for the very first time consumer expenditure data on a mid-year basis, for the twelve months from mid-2011 through mid-2012. The data shows that the social stratification trend is continuing. In the calendar year 2010, the top 20% of income households (top quintile with $95,000+ incomes) accounted for 55.4% of all spending for location-based entertainment and fees. For the mid-2011/2012 period their share had grown to 56.9% of all such spending.
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Back in 2000, the top quintile of income households only accounted for 50.5% of all such spending. So their share has grown by one-eighth while the share of spending by especially the lower income households has declined.
What this means is that the market for location-based entertainment is shifting more and more to higher income households and they are the market to be targeted since those 20% of households now account for more than one-half (56.9%) of all such spending.
About Randy White
Randy White is CEO and co-founder of the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group. The 31-year-old company, with offices in Kansas City, Missouri, has worked for over 600 clients in 37 countries throughout the world. Projects the company has designed and produced have won seventeen 1st place awards. Randy is considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on feasibility, brand development, design and production of leisure experience destinations including entertainment, eatertainment, edutainment, agritainment/agritourism, play and leisure facilities.
Randy was featured on the Food Network's Unwrapped television show as an eatertainment expert, quoted as an entertainment/edutainment center expert in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times and Time magazine and received recognition for family-friendly designs by Pizza Today magazine. One of the company's projects was featured as an example of an edutainment project in the book The Experience Economy. Numerous national newspapers have interviewed him as an expert on shopping center and mall entertainment and retail-tainment.
Randy is a graduate of New York University. Prior to repositioning the company in 1989 to work exclusively in the leisure and learning industry, White Hutchinson was active in the retail/commercial real estate industry as a real estate consultancy specializing in workouts/turnarounds of commercial projects. In the late 1960s to early 1980s, Randy managed a diversified real estate development company that developed, owned and managed over 2.0 million square feet of shopping centers and mixed-use projects and 2,000 acres of residential subdivisions. Randy has held the designations of CSM (Certified Shopping Center Manager) and Certified Retail Property Executive (CRX) from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).
He has authored over 150 articles that have been published in over 40 leading entertainment/leisure and early childhood education industry magazines and journals and has been a featured speaker and keynoter at over 40 different conventions and trade groups.
Randy is the editor of his company's Leisure eNewsletter, has a blog and posts on Twitter and Linkedin.
