I know they will be in the game, so I was wondering if there was a list of what groups will make it into the game?
I did a search and all I found was a bunch of threads with 1 or 2 groups, but nothing close to the dozen (at least) that I hope will make it. From what I’ve seen though, soccer mom, midlife crisis guy, and boy racer are the favorites.
Probably not decided yet, as the tycoon part of the game is not yet worked on. I expect groups like you mentioned.
EDIT: I also think that putting in to many different groups of people will make the game “confusing”. I think it would be best to have a couple of parameters instead of “soccer mom” etc.
What i mean;
Poor, Mid-class or Rich
Man or Woman
Age 20-30,30-40,40-50
Cant come up with anything more at the moment, but i think you could get a couple of target groups from that already (18? My math is horrible).
I believe there has been said somewhere to have up to 40 target groups… not sure about this, can’t find back the post either.
In my head is a number of 50-60, but I have no source either. 
But in order to model the market niches into the game there must be quite a big number of target groups.
Not only that but groups will likely overlap each other at specific points as well. Most tycoon games who use target groups (Mall Tycoon, for example) use ages, gender, income, and personality types. All of them intersect with at least two other groups across the spectrum of target groups. Not saying these will be the groups, but I am betting it will be something along this line.
Rough answer: “Lots and lots of them”
Basically as many groups as we can manage and works well, but I’m imagining things like “Sporty Hatch Buyer”, “Hot Hatch Buyer”, “Budget Family Buyer”, “Elderly Millionaire”, “Courier” etc. The split of which kind of buyers exist in what quantities would vary based on the country, it’s current economic state, price of fuel etc.
But it’ have tweaks to national tastes like the US having lots of larger car and muscle car buyers keen on ride comfort, high power and large interior/cargo space, but Japan having lots of small city car buyers for example.
That’s the rough overview, but it’s subject to a lot more design and tweaking.
I have been thinking about this Daffy, and this is what I came up with:
You would have a chart of different ages in a country from 18-23, 23-28, 28-33, 33-38 etc. etc. You should then make part of a certain group for a certain percentage, so lets say 18-23 of age, 78% of them in European Country X is into Sporty Hatchbacks in the year 1996. At the same time, the same group of 18-23 has 12% of them interested in Sedans in the same country. So what you get eventually, is spread over different groups, a certain percentage of the population ages interested in this group. This way the targetgroup will count as the interests of the buyers. Of course there can be overlap, as some of the 18-23 sporty hatch buyers, might also like sedan. So the number never needs to add up exactly to 100%.
Ten per country, you could tie the amount of money each group has to spend to the age-groups. This way you could say 18-23 is more attracted to sporty hatches because they are cheap (and of course more power), a small percentage which has more money to spend would like a convertible, a sedan or an SUV for example.
The group of 33-38 would really like a sedan, SUV or station(wagon) because of having a family with kids and going on vacation + also having money to spend.
To give you a better view, heres a chart. It’s quite hard to explain in text anyway.
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/111 … groups.pdf
This is what it could look like. I didnt finish all the percentages, because it’s a hell of a job to get right. Those percentages SHOULD add up to 100%, so its not just random number inserting.
The interest in different cars like sporty hatch and sedan could be overlapping.
Wonder what you think of this
I wonder why you need age groups? Do they add anything to it or would a simple “20% like sporty hatchback, 1% supercars, 13% expensive SUVs, …” do it, too?
Are you referring to just taking the total population together, then say x% loves this, x% loves that? If so then I think working with agegroups works better for keeping a good overview and still get some depth. You can directly see in the chart which area you could focus on when you got for sedans for example, and still have the game play with these values in a fun way to get more niches or groups to focus on without adding tons of extra work or making up extra targetgroups (or names for targetgroups, for that matter).
I don’t think that what some age-groups like is a good factor, i think that many people would want and they like luxury cars doesn’t mean that they will buy them (mainly because of the lack of cash).
So lets say that you only have 2 choices a Ferrari and a Fiat, now even tho most people would probably prefer buying the Ferrari, they cant and therefore they buy the Fiat.
That is why i think that the most important factor is actually income.
If you looked at my PDF, you can see I added an income factor to the list to compare, which is there for a reason. The reason you actually just gave. I want a ferrari because of all the luxury, prestige, sportiness and so on… but I cant afford it. So I have to find something within my money range and getting as close to my needs for luxury, sportiness and prestige, so I wouldnt buy a Trabant, but more likely a Honda Civic. (maybe bad example)
[quote=“hillybilly”]I don’t think that what some age-groups like is a good factor, i think that many people would want and they like luxury cars doesn’t mean that they will buy them (mainly because of the lack of cash).
So lets say that you only have 2 choices a Ferrari and a Fiat, now even tho most people would probably prefer buying the Ferrari, they cant and therefore they buy the Fiat.
That is why i think that the most important factor is actually income.[/quote]
That is a good point… I think what a person wants should be one thing, but what they actually buy be dependent on their income.
A good real world example is that I’d really love to have a 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4, but since I’m lacking a few million in the bank, I decided to get a cheaper alternative, a 1971 Datsun 240Z… Both classic sports cars, both look and sound great in their own way, but obviously the Datsun is a much more realistic choice.
I think a good solution is to have the various demographics of what people want in a car, and then have sub-groups of varying income levels within those groups.