# Affinity (market research)

In market research, affinity is the measure of how intensely one or more characteristics of a target group are pronounced in a comparison group ("population"), from which it can be determined how strongly the target group is represented within the comparison group (the entire target group can those who belong to the target group but not to the comparison group may be larger). It can be given as a decimal (“0.95”) or percentage (“95%”) value (the% sign is often left out) and is also referred to as an affinity value or index value (“index” because the value indicates something or you can read something from it).

Affinity is also the measure of the suitability of an advertising medium (medium such as magazine, newspaper, TV station, radio station, internet offer, etc.) for addressing a specific target group, measured as the proportion of users in the target group of all users of the advertising medium or as an index, through the ratio of the reach in the target group to the total readership and / or number of visitors of a medium.

Examples:

• The share 1 of vehicle owners 2 in all readers of the customer magazine of Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe 3
• The share 1 of non-owners of a vehicle 2 in all readers of ADAC Motorwelt 3
• The share 1 of people interested in buying a car 2 of all readers of ADAC Motorwelt 3
• The proportion of smokers 2 among all Germans 3
1 Expression of the property or target group size to be determined
2 Characteristic characteristic of the target group
3 population as comparison group

## Value as an index

By putting them in relation, the value shows how pronounced the characteristics of the target group are within the comparison group.

With an affinity value of 100% (1.0), the property is average; a value clearly above this indicates an intensive expression of the property - the target group and the population are therefore very affine. If the population is the readership of an advertising medium, in this case it would very likely be possible to reach the target group via this advertising medium and to address it through advertising .

## Calculating the value

${\ displaystyle {\ frac {\ text {Reach in the target group}} {\ text {Reach in the population}}} \ cdot 100 \, \%}$