Percentage Of Diaper Sales?

[new diaper]

Has any diaper company ever done research on the % of sales to the d/l adult baby community?. Maybe they should advertise more aiming at us

[Red Barchetta]

Has any diaper company ever done research on the % of sales to the d/l adult baby community?. Maybe they should advertise more aiming at us

I can see a definite problem with such research......

First MIGHT be fairly easy to figure out, that is how many are buying them for AB/DL reasons, vs a actual incontinence problem..

Second, once you have the above sorted out, how do you count those like myself - that would buy them anyway because of an incontinence problem, but also use them in AB play?

[AutieAB]

Has any diaper company ever done research on the % of sales to the d/l adult baby community?. Maybe they should advertise more aiming at us

Simple. Spend the day outside your local Walmart (or whatever) and watch for people coming out with Depends. Every time you see someone, ask them loudly, with a clipboard in your hand, whether they wear them because they have an embarrassing problem or because they get a sexual kick from them. At the end of the day, just compare the ratio between the amount of people who were mortified against the number of black eyes you were given and there's your answer.

Really though, we're a small market. The big portion of the market is care homes, hospitals, etc. And as Red Barchetta said, the concept of being either an incontinent diaper user or ABDL diaper user is over simplified. It's better thought of as a spectrum with incontinent strictly-non-ABDLs at one end and ABDLs with perfect physical and mental health at the other. Most people don't fit those definitions though and belong somewhere or another within the large, blurry centre ground.

AutieAB

[mogumbo]

This isn't as complex as you might think.... but does involve some speculation. It's estimated that the AB/DL population iis about one tenth of one percent or 33,000 in the US (pop. est. 300 million). The incon population is about 33 million (again in the US). Based on these numbers and the assumption that every AB/DL buys diapers and every incon buys diapersrs, we're about 1% of the market.

Mo

[Mr. Sea Otter]

This isn't as complex as you might think.... but does involve some speculation. It's estimated that the AB/DL population iis about one tenth of one percent or 33,000 in the US (pop. est. 300 million). The incon population is about 33 million (again in the US). Based on these numbers and the assumption that every AB/DL buys diapers and every incon buys diapersrs, we're about 1% of the market.

Mo

I am curious where you got those numbers.... I have never seen an estimate for the AB/DL population.

[Red Barchetta]

I am curious where you got those numbers.... I have never seen an estimate for the AB/DL population.

I was just wondering the same thing.....

Somehow that just doesn't sound like an accurate count to me (but I am just guessing so...) but if that is from an actual study......

[justindiapers]

This isn't as complex as you might think.... but does involve some speculation. It's estimated that the AB/DL population iis about one tenth of one percent or 33,000 in the US (pop. est. 300 million). The incon population is about 33 million (again in the US). Based on these numbers and the assumption that every AB/DL buys diapers and every incon buys diapersrs, we're about 1% of the market.

Mo

More speculation - most AB/DLs probably don't use as many diapers as the average incontinent person. I average about one diaper per week, which is obviously far less than someone who is incontinent. Even a bed wetter would be using about seven times as many diapers as me. So even if we make up 0.1% of the US population, I suspect that we would make up less than 1% of the adult diaper market.

[mogumbo]

The number of incons comes from industry studies (mostly manyfacturers) and the AB/DL estimates are based on general fetish numbers from sexuality studies on deviation. I can't begin to estimate usge numbers, those are waaayyy too variable.

Mo (never claimed to be a scientist but good with stats)

[RMS401]

The number of incons comes from industry studies (mostly manyfacturers) and the AB/DL estimates are based on general fetish numbers from sexuality studies on deviation. I can't begin to estimate usge numbers, those are waaayyy too variable.

Mo (never claimed to be a scientist but good with stats)

Mo, the best guess anyone has is that ten percent of the population is gay. Are you saying that there are as many people with this odd little fetish as there are gay people in the world? I would say that there are probably more gay people than there are people with even the most common of fetishes, like foot fetishes, let alone something as incredibly rare and unusual as diapers.

-RMS

[Sunshine2585]

Mo, the best guess anyone has is that ten percent of the population is gay. Are you saying that there are as many people with this odd little fetish as there are gay people in the world? I would say that there are probably more gay people than there are people with even the most common of fetishes, like foot fetishes, let alone something as incredibly rare and unusual as diapers.

-RMS

Where did mo say ten pecent of the population is ABDL? He said one tenth of one percent.

[RMS401]

Where did mo say ten pecent of the population is ABDL? He said one tenth of one percent.

Forgive me, you're absolutely right about that. I should have read that more carefully. Still, I'd say that number is unknowable and probably still high.

-RMS

[Red Barchetta]

Forgive me, you're absolutely right about that. I should have read that more carefully. Still, I'd say that number is unknowable and probably still high.

-RMS

Well, I don't know about completely unknowable, but definitely difficult to accurately obtain. Plenty may be involved, but do not wish to admit it at all, to anyone, for any reason - but even then, there are ways, it just makes things very difficult.

Example, fairly recently (like within the past few months), on the history channel no less, I saw a mini-series having to do with sex and fetishes. You really only started hearing about AB/DL quite recently - but this mini-series came up with some pretty convincing evidence that that the practice of AB/DL dates back to at least the 1700s (and probably before that).

But for now, the figures mentioned are probably the closest you are going to get, without spending way more time and money than it's really worth for most purposes.

[Mr. Sea Otter]

Humans always want to put things into nice neat categories and such. We want to think people either are AB/DL or they are not AB/DL. Black or white, yes or no. I don't think that is how it works though... I suspect it is more of a spectrum.

I have heard people describe a persons sexual orientation as being on a scale of 1-5 (or 1-10, whatever.... point is is a spectrum) with one end being totally straight and the other end being totally gay. People in the middle are bisexual, you get the idea. I think being AB/DL is not too different from this. For arguments sake lets say a person who reads this website is 1 (i.e. all of us AB/DLs), and a person who thinks we are sick and what we do is "wrong" is a 10. But there is a lot of room inbetween here. I think a lot of people like to do AB/DL things and would fall somewhere in between. Every girlfriend I have ever had, and I suspect most people everywhere, like to cuddle with loved ones. When we get sick, we all want to be babied. People, in very intimate moments with people they care about, often talk in babyish tones and act like babies. Love is often expressed in terms that many of us 1s can relate to. I mean, in the bedroom at night, how many people don't snuggle with their bedmate? Some people like to snuggle more than others. Some people really snuggle a lot. And some people take snuggling and baby talk to the next level.

There are more people than we think who either already understand us or could easily understand us. What we want and do is not so strange as we think. Sure it is different, absolutely! But all we are is people at the far end of a spectrum that has a lot more people in the middle than at the either end.

[Valentine]

I love those scales to rate your sexuality, because I don't fit on them. I am asexual. I don't want to have sex, I am completely uninterested in having sex. So where do I fit on the scale, there is no 0, or 11 for that matter. Am I a 5, even though the interest in each is 0? I remember going over a sexual survey that said I was gay, because attraction for men was the same as women, of course both were nil, but it let the homosexual community claim me as one of theirs.

People don't always fit on your scales.

[Mr. Sea Otter]

I love those scales to rate your sexuality, because I don't fit on them. I am asexual. I don't want to have sex, I am completely uninterested in having sex. So where do I fit on the scale, there is no 0, or 11 for that matter. Am I a 5, even though the interest in each is 0? I remember going over a sexual survey that said I was gay, because attraction for men was the same as women, of course both were nil, but it let the homosexual community claim me as one of theirs.

People don't always fit on your scales.

First and foremost, yes people don't always fit on scales.

Having said that though, I am not sure I agree with you in this particular instance. If I recall (sorry if I am wrong!), you used to have sex, but got tired of it or something (I seem to remember that for some reason)? You don't have to want to have sex, or even have any interest in sex to fit on it a sexuality spectrum. You can be asexual. Its just that if (or when) you were sexual which gender would you prefer to have sex with? Your sexuality is not linked to your sex drive! Its more of an identity thing.... I mean, do you consider yourself as a man or a woman, or both or neither? If you don't want to have sex with either, (or conversely if you had to have sex and had absolutely no preference) you are a classic bisexual.

This is of course totally tangential to my main point.... that there are a lot of people with AB/DL tendencies out there.

[Valentine]

You confused me with someone else, I've never had sex and never had an interest in having sex. I can't even imagine having sex. I'm not attracted to men or women in any sort of sexual way. Saying that I am bisexual because I don't have any sexual desire is ls like saying someone is an alcoholic because they don't drink beer, wine or liquor. Asexuality is a small, probably 1 in a 100,000 or less, sexual group. The biggest webforum for asexuals has about 8,000 members, and is relatively new.

Where do stop calling people AB though? If John Doe like playing with his wife's breasts, is he an AB? Jane Smith likes being held and cuddled by her boyfriend, is she an AB?

[Guest John_Q_Sample]

Well, I'm glad you all decided to stop picking on poor Mo... sheesh...

[Mr. Sea Otter]

Where do stop calling people AB though? If John Doe like playing with his wife's breasts, is he an AB? Jane Smith likes being held and cuddled by her boyfriend, is she an AB?

Exactly! It is human nature to try to put people into categories, to draw lines in the sand and classify things into neat boxes. We want to know, 'Is John an AB or is he not'?

The point I am trying to make is that it is not that simple (it doesn't have to be yes or no, black or white) and we should try to look at it differently and ask different questions. A lot of people like to do things that are "ABesk", and some people (like us) just take that further (OK, in some cases a lot further) than most would go. I think that the vast majority of people have some amount of "ABism" as part of their personality (i.e. the John and Jane as above). We get so hung up on this question of 'are you an ab or not', when we should be asking instead 'how much of an AB are you'?

My point in all this is that we are not as strange as we think we are. What we do is done by lots and lots of folks, just to a lesser degree. So many of ABs and DLs think nobody in the world would ever understand them, or think that they are so different. Well, sure we are different, I readily admit that. But the desire to be babied is something most people can relate to.

P.S. Valentine, sorry I must have been thinking of somebody else.