Introducing harmonized income data

As part of the development of Globalwebindex, we are happy to present you a new feature, very useful when you compare audiences across countries.

We all know the value of targeting people based on their wealth or social status. Unfortunately, the definition of status varies largely across the world making it impossible to introduce that kind of variable in the Globalwebindex.

To overcome this limit, since wave 2 we’ve had data on personal income that together with the statements on attitudes can help you to define audiences based on perceived social status.
Until now, the data about personal income was only available as a country-specific variable therefore it was impossible to use it across countries.

For example you might have wanted to compare affluent audiences around the world based on incomes, struggling for one hour with the exchange rates only to find out that even the highest income people in China earn less than the lowest income people in the USA – (yes, the world is that diverse!)

Now, unless you wanted to use complex formulas like the purchasing power parity, it was impossible to select relatively wealthy people across all countries.

To simplify this task we’ve created a new global variable that segments income in three approximate groups: lower 25%, middle 50% and higher 25%. So it is now very easy to select relatively low, medium or high income people.

You can find the new Global Income variable in the Audience definition page in the demographics box and you can also use it to cut your audience in Topline analysis.

For example, in this chart, we see that medium income people enjoy having the latest technological gadgets while high income people tend to think of technology as a tool to complicate lives.

We have added this variable for Wave 3 only so keep it in mind when selecting your audience (it will make your sample smaller).

Also, note that the percentiles are approximate and that about 10% of the sample didn’t report their income so they’ve been automatically excluded from this variable.

Based on your feedback, we might consider adding the Global Income variable for wave 2 and/or introduce an option to select respondents who didn’t disclose their income in the first place.