Documenting demographic trends help please!?

[Jeff]

I am currently doing a distance correspondence course, and I have to take a marketing course in order to get my diploma down the road. I was mainly just looking for a second opinion on this assignment that I am required to do. The last part of this assignment asks me to, document demographic trends (eg. aging population, erosion in spending power. etc.) and relate these products you have chosen to report on. So basically for the first half of the assignment I had to do an environmental scan of 2 products of my choice being, iPhones and Facebook. So this last part I was just hoping that someone could give me their take on what they think this last part of the assignment is all about? Thank you very much to anyone that can lend a hand.

[Steve D]

Easy - look at the targeted market. Figure out, using demographic trends if this market is expanding and is it expanding in relation to other demographic groups. For example, using Facebook, if the majority of current users are say age 20 to 30, you would get demographic data based on age and then compare your target market and saturation to other markets (say 30 to 40 year olds). You can't do marketing without knowing who your market is - you certainly don't want to advertise to a market that is shrinking and in which you already have a 90% saturation rate.