Demography for Business Decision Making

Demography as a discipline is now at the point where its relevance to business decision making is indisputable—and top business management knows this. People who lack an understanding of state-of-the-art demographic techniques, and who cannot adapt to new ways of thinking prompted by demography and demographers, will find themselves significantly disadvantaged in today's competitive business environment. Pol and Thomas thus provide practitioners and students alike with a concise but intensive introduction to the concepts and methods of business demography. They chronicle current demographic trends and explain their meaning for business. With numerous examples drawn from business and industry, they make clear that business demography is truly a decision-making science.

Pol and Thomas introduce basic concepts, then present an overview of recent and future demographic trends. They elaborate on the application of current demographic methods to planning and marketing in the contemporary business environment, and illustrate their points with numerous charts, maps, and sidebars. Pol and Thomas provide many examples of real world situations in which demographic methods, data, perspective, and theory are actively applied. With sections on sources of health care data, the calculation of demographic rates, the demographic resources available and up-to-date statistics on current demographic trends, their book becomes not only a unique resource for professionals, but also a useful text and reference for their colleagues in the academic community.

Louis G. Pol is Peter Kiewit Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. He has conducted research and lectured in a number of countries in Europe and the former Soviet Union. This book is an extension of his first Quorum book, Business Demography (1987). He is also coauthor with Dr. Thomas of three other books on the intersection of demography research methods and health care.

Richard K. Thomas is a partner in the Memphis firm Medical Services Research Group. A highly experienced health services researcher, marketer, and planner, with a PhD from Vanderbilt University, Dr. Thomas has published widely on topics in health and health care and is well known as a speaker at medical services conferences. He served on the faculty of the University of Memphis for more than twenty years and is now an adjunct professor for two other health professional training programs.