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With the latest series of 'The Apprentice' currently on our screens where the winning contestant now receives a £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar for a new business venture, the latest Premier TGI survey from Kantar Media highlights some key insights into those who ultimately hold the corporate purse strings - the budget holders!

In Britain there are over 500,000 adults in the top (AB) social grades who are responsible for a budget of at least £500k.  They represent an extremely valuable group to all kinds of marketers as not only do they hold the purse strings at a corporate level, but they are also relatively wealthy personally.

These big budget holders are most likely to be aged in their late thirties or early forties and are skewed towards being male (three-quarters of them are men).  They are an educated bunch, almost a quarter more likely than the average AB adult to have a degree.  Their educated background appears to have paid off in later life as they are almost three times as likely as other ABs to be particularly affluent in terms of the spending power they have at their disposal.  In addition to having the financial capabilities to spend, they are also more likely to be amongst the highest spending fifth of AB consumers.  An appreciation of what motivates them is key to fully engaging with this affluent bunch, once convinced to part with their wonga, the sky's the limit for this wealthy, spendthrift group.

What distinguishes big budget holders from ABs as a whole (in terms of their motivations) is that they are far more likely to be ambitious workaholics who like to take risks and are short on free time to relax.  Nevertheless, in terms of consumer preferences, they are more likely to be keen on buying the latest gadgets and gizmos as well as to consider themselves something of a wine connoisseur.  Such opinions are backed up by their spending habits - Premier TGI shows they are over two and a half times as likely as other ABs to own an iPhone and almost 40% more likely to be heavy consumer of wine.

Being extremely time pressured, this group will embrace anything which can help relieve a bit of that pressure; over half of them agree they'd be willing to pay more for a product that saves them time.  This could possibly explain their reliance towards mobile technology - they are more likely to feel they couldn't live without mobile communication and are over four times as likely to spend at least £50 a month on their mobiles.

However, one thing they do manage to find time for in their busy calendar is keeping fit.  Approaching three-quarters of them exercise at least twice a week, with weight training, golf and football amongst the preferred forms of exercise for the group. Big budget holders like to look good on the outside too - they are over 60% more likely than the average adult to like keeping up with the latest fashions and twice as likely to agree a designer label improves a person's image. They are also almost a quarter more likely to consider having cosmetic surgery.

Business travel represents another significant part of their hectic schedule.  Almost a third of big budget holders travel abroad on business, making them over three times as likely as the average AB adult to do so.  Of these, two-thirds have travelled abroad on business at least three times in the last year.  It is not just business which is sending them abroad, big budget holders are 35% more likely than the average AB to own foreign property.  Unsurprisingly, given their frequent flying tendencies, they are over twice as likely to belong to an airline frequent flyer scheme - almost a fifth belong to the British Airways Executive Club.

These people are extremely busy and reaching them through relevant communication channels is essential.  The group are considerably more likely to be amongst the heaviest consumers of outdoor and internet. Their increased propensity to be regularly exposed to outdoor advertising is a factor of their demanding lifestyles - travelling to and from the office and travelling to meetings home and abroad.  Their tendency to be heavy internet consumers is perhaps a result of their relative keenness on new technology.

Furthermore, the internet helps them make decisions as consumers - Premier TGI shows they are more likely to be influenced by comments and reviews posted by other web users.  They are also a third more likely to refer to the internet before making a purchase and almost twice as likely to make an online purchase at least once a week.  Despite making consumer decisions online, the group also go online regularly for business reasons - they are three times as likely as the average AB to have visited LinkedIn in the last four weeks.

As appeared on Mediatel Newsline, May 2011