IDEX Online Research: Consumer Jewelry Expenditures - Two-Person Households Hold the Most Potential

For jewelers, a household with only two people holds the most potential for buying jewelry. This household is most likely to represent the traditional husband-wife relationship, with an emotional bond that helps drive an emotional purchase – jewelry.

It also helps that both spouses are likely to work full time. As a result, these two-person households have the highest per-capita income of any size household. That means those households also are likely to have the most discretionary income.

Multi-person households are also fertile fields for jewelers trying to reach consumers with a high propensity for purchasing jewelry. In fact, households with five or more people have the largest aggregate jewelry spending of any American household. But those five-person households also have the lowest per-capita spending on jewelry of any American households.

The graph below summarizes jewelry expenditures in 2005 by household size.

Data from the 2005 BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey changed somewhat from the 2004 results, as the graph below illustrates. In 2004, two-person households were the biggest spenders for jewelry.

Per-Capita Spending Tells A Different Story

While large households have high per-household jewelry expenditures, it is important to recognize the importance of per-person spending on jewelry.

Analysis of 2005 data related to per-person spending on jewelry confirms the same surprise that 2004 data revealed: while single-person households spend the least on jewelry, they spend the most on a per-person basis. There is a perfect inverse correlation between per-person spending on jewelry by household size and the number of people in the household, as the graph below illustrates.

For jewelers, the best and largest market for jewelry sales is among households with one or two persons.