Market research for advertising purposes

[Todd Dawson]

I am looking for feedback on the following:

1) WHY do people buy portraits?
2) WHEN do people buy portraits?
3) WHO buys the portraits?

I am putting together a brochure for self promotion, and wanted to address those issues with some authority.

What is your experience?

[Michele Rushworth]

I concentrate on family portraiture at the moment so I cannot comment on the corporate market.

There are, of course, many variations in the answers to your questions, but what I have learned is the following:

Why: People buy portraits (as opposed to high-end photographs) as a status symbol and to have an object that will last potentially centuries (instead of years as with photos). People enjoy the hand-made aspect of portraiture. Some clients attribute a rather mystical quality to the work of "Artists", believing that we somehow "see" more than the average person and have a gift at capturing personality. Some clients buy portraits because they enjoy having original works of art in their home.

When: One of the major portrait brokers said at a conference that 65% of the entire portrait market is children's portraiture. (I imagine the majority of the remainder is corporate.) Hence most of my family portraits are of kids. I have painted commissions of children as young as two and teens as old as seventeen. Commissions come in at all times of the year. So to answer your question, there doesn't seem to be any specific "when" involved, other than before the kids are grown.

Who: My clients are affluent Moms. I reach this market by donating to expensive private school charity fundraiser auctions.

Hope that helps!

[Mary Sparrow]

I basically only do children, sometimes the mother and child. I don't know that I necessarily set out to do this, but this is what evolved and this is what I do.

That said,

1) Why do people buy portraits? My clients want to "immortalize" the baby innocence of their growing child.

2) When do they buy portraits? They most often approach me between the ages of 3-5, when their children still have a bit of the baby in them, but are starting to look like the people they will be. I also get the biggest amount of interest in early fall when they are thinking about Christmas gifts, then another spurt around Feb/March after the dust from Christmas has settled.

3) Who buys the portraits? Upper middle class, stay-at-home soccer mom types seem to be the majority of my clients, which is a wonderful thing for me. Their lives revolve around play groups etc. therefore most of my business comes from one mom seeing the other mother's portrait while their kids play.

This is my experience. Hope it helps a little.