Demographics

The Demographic Results, as they have been historically, are offered first. The number of respondents in the 5th year of this survey have again increased, 610 respondents and 526 valid entries (checked for double entries, blank sends, etc). These values indicate a significant number (20-25% of pre-order consumers) of Archives customers are particpating in this survey.

  The average age of the survey respondent was 35+8 years old (Median=35). This age is consistent with that reported in previous surveys (See table below), suggesting that Archives favored more seasoned comics aficionados. Historical data are presented in the table below and a frequency distribution of a randomly sampled 250 respondents presented below.

Once again, Archives respondents spanned the globe. While 80% of respondents remain American, countries with high representation included Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Several European nations and the Phillipines were also notable in this years survey.

The distribution of Archives ownership from the same random sampling is shown below.

As reported previously, there is significant skew in the tendency to buy Archives. The median consumer in this survey owns 25 (about 1/3rd of them) Archives but the average number is 32 Archives. This discrepancy is caused by the presence of a signifiant number of high end consumers that own 3 times the median number of archives. Thus, it can be said there are two populations of Archives consumers, the completists and the more typical consumers. Only about 10% of Archives Consumers can be considered completists but because of the large amount of capital they plow into the franchise, they represent an important part of the total market.

This year the survey queried how many Archives the respondents have bought in the past year. The median number bought per year was 5+4, or about 40% of the offered Archives. This value reinforces the previous observation that survey respondents by roughly 35-40% of the Archive editions. The large standard deviation reflects that large skew in the data toward very high numbers. These values also correlate well with previous survey data in which total number of Archives owned has been tallied, as shown in the graph below.

The slope of this line is 3.8, again reinforcing that most Archives consumer buy 30-40% of the offerings in any given year.

When asked how many ADDITIONAL Archive editions they would buy, the median response was 2 and the mean response was 4+4, again indicating the skew induced by two populations of consumers. When one accounts for the median and mean purchase rates (median =5, mean =6), this indicates that the average consumer would buy ~50% more Archives than he/she is buying now. This is particularly true of the completists. When one examines the sub-set that owns >70 Archvives, the median requested number is 8. Those that like the Archives, like them a lot.

This year, it was also inquired as to where the Archive respondents obtained their Archives. Interestingly, the most enlightening finding is the continuing erosion of the local retailer as a source for premium collections. Note the following:

The continuing decline in the local retailer market reflects the expansion of other venues (19% reported using mail order, another 15% used online bookstores). This is important to keep in mind when considering sales trends and preorder numbers.

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