The future of dating industry

Work in progress.... (last modified March 19, 2007)

The dating industry is still in transition today, due to social changes, and to new possibilities introduced by technology. In order to predict its future we first have to understand the real needs of daters. We also have to look at what the dating industry has offered in terms of products and services, and try to evaluate if the industry is really tuned to the market. Any deviation form the ideal equilibrium is very informative. Trying to find its causes gives us a good insight into the dynamics of the dating industry. The future is predicted by supposing a transition of the system towards a state where the future needs of daters are entirely fulfilled.

Dating is about real people building relationships. Here we consider that it always implies real-life interaction; we ignore platonic and/or computer-mediated long-term relationships. The role of the dating industry is to serve daters. A healthy industry is one that meets the needs of consumers, is one that offers products and services worth paying for. I agree that this unidirectional relation between industry and market is simplistic – industries can change markets – but we want to keep it simpler.

In order to understand daters, their needs and their behaviors, we need to outline a conceptual framework.

List of labels of important concepts

Understanding interpersonal relationships

• Contact
• Involvement
• Intimacy
• Deterioration

The dating industry in only concerned with the genesis of interpersonal relationships. It provides products and services that facilitate contact, help with the involvement and development of a certain degree of intimacy. Once two individuals have made contact, have found some common ground, and have attained a comfortable degree of intimacy, they can move further and cherish the newly established relationship independently from the dating organization. The development and the eventual deterioration of this relationship is not the concern of a dating organization.

The nature and the dynamics of an interpersonal relationship are the subject of interpersonal theories (psychological, sociological, and anthropological approaches). Here we are only interested in the early stages of formation of interpersonal relationships. So what is the underlying ontology that enables our comprehension of this phenomenon that we call dating?

We have to recognize that dating can be modeled as a game, and that a game involves actions. Therefore, in trying to make sense of initiation-of-an-interpersonal-relationship we will inevitably come across conceptual structures outlined by some type of game theory and action theory. Psychology, sociology, and anthropology contribute to put the flesh around this conceptual skeleton. The information provided by these complementary disciplines completes the whole picture; it specifies the nature and the context of the game, as well as the characteristics of the players/agents.

• Players/Agent(s): the dater(s)
• Situation or context: dating
• Objective: establishing some type of interpersonal relationship (relational goals)
• Beliefs: about how objectives (desires) can be fulfilled under given circumstances (options and opportunities)
• Strategy: coordinated actions that are believed to translate into success (success = to attain relational goals)
• Means: whatever daters have at their disposal to fulfill their actions, and realize their strategy in order to attain their relational goals. Examples: means of communication, physical interaction, etc.
• Perceived success: subjective or objective evaluation of consequences of dating actions aimed at relational goals, feedback to adjust strategy.
• Experience: the familiarity of daters with the dating game, with the environment, with the means, etc.
• Learning ability: the ability to adjust strategy form negative feedback, taking into account experience, examples from other daters, or educational sources.
• Self-knowledge: the ability to assess the object of desire (the kind of relationship we are looking for), to choose the proper means (the ones that the dater can control best), etc.
• Social environment: habit, culture, etc., defines the dating game, it’s roles, its goals, its set of means, strategies, etc.
• Psychological elements: psychological health, personality, availability, etc.

Every theory of dating, incorporating knowledge from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and communication fixes the meaning of the above terms, and the relation between them. A theory underlies a family of models. The way we articulate these concepts in natural language, is related to the theory/models we subscribe to. Thus, it is important to have a general view of the underling conceptual map, before we even start to talk about dating and daters.

Technology and dating

Technology has operated a fundamental transformation in dating. The most important cause of this is the possibility to communicate anonymously. Research shows that anonymity leads to more disclosure, and intimacy. Before two online daters meet in-person, they already know a great deal about each other, and have already developed a certain degree of intimacy, and comfort. This changes dramatically the dating game. Traditional dating starts with face-to-face interactions, and usually the interest, as well as the feelings towards the other person are hidden, and are revealed only a bit at the time, and usually indirectly, depending on feedback, and on the comfort level between the two.

Another important influence of technology on dating is exerted at the level of communication. Communication plays a huge part in dating. It is probably the most important means that daters have at their disposal to play the dating game. The difference between computer-mediated communication and face-to-face communication is fundamental, and has been the subject of numerous scientific studies in the last decades. Technology-mediated communication provides a less stressful environment where daters can better control their self-presentation, and better strategize. Some manifestations of this difference are:

• Misrepresentation: for various reasons people tend to portray a persona that is unrealistic to a greater degree.
• End of conversation: exchanges can be ended abruptly, as this action bears insignificant consequences
• Intimacy: people tend to disclose more intimate information, as this action bears less-significant consequences
• Rudeness: extreme behaviors, normally inhibited in a real social environment, are common in computer-mediated communication.

Furthermore, technology enables daters to choose their potential match from a bigger pool, to interact with more individuals, and to learn from that experience.

I hope that I presented enough elements to convince the reader that technology has changed the dating game. This transition can be easily understood within the conceptual framework that we have laid down above. Technology has been widely adopted by the dating industry because it was well received by daters. The ultimate cause is that it makes the dating game more interesting, by providing huge payoffs: intimacy, each independent rejection is less harmful (go here for more in-depth), putting an end to a stillborn relation is less complicated, access to a larger pool of potential matches, etc. But there are also a lot of examples of undesirable effects introduced by technology. Online dating is a type of dating service that relies mostly on technology, and offers daters the possibility to meet and to communicate online. Until recently online dating organizations ware cut-off from traditional offline dating events. According an extreme importance to technology, at the expense of real-life interaction, introduced some significant problems.

• Misrepresentation
• Security
• A torrent of unpleasant messages from non-serious daters
  
• And many others.

Until now it seems that payoffs exceed nuisance. The hybrid model - online/offline dating - seems to offer a combination that further improves the payoff/nuisance ratio. How technology should be used in the dating context, we have yet to discover. One thing is certain: the dating game has been greatly modified, but on a background of continuity. It still holds important elements form its traditional version. And that is because the players (daters) are still real beings manifesting real needs, and the aim of the game (relational goals) is something that has to be cherished in real-life.

The need for dating services

Latest studies suggest that the U.S. dating market is about 2 billion $ (reference coming soon). But this is just an empirical observation validating the idea that there is a real need for dating services; and understanding why is more interesting then just knowing the fact. Here we are not seeking to understand the need to date. Psychologists or biologists might be interested by this question, but in the context of this review we will consider the need to date as being trivial. What we are trying to understand is why in our society, as opposed to others (more traditional) , individuals are ready to pay for dating services. The dating market in the U.S. has exploded in the past decade; what happened in our society, and what should we expect in the future?

Here are some factors that combined together help us to explain why dating services became something worth paying for in North America.

• Marriage is on decline, and the number of singles is on the rise.
• Long-term relationships don’t come with a life guaranty anymore.
• People are settling down at older ages, and before that, they have time to try a few different relationships.
• Emancipation of women: they are free to date before marriage; they also have the means to put an end to an unsuccessful relationship.
• Openness towards sex before marriage.
• Society doesn’t encourage family-values like before.
• Career pressure and time pressure increase over time.
  
• Mobility: people tend to move more often, and to be dislocated from their social network.
• Because of the gravity of sexual harassment in the workplace people shy away from getting involved in intimate relationships at work.
• The emergence of the happy and sociable single: as the stigma of being single fades away, and more services suited for singles are offered, some individuals decide not to get involved in long-term relationships.
• Family less involved in matchmaking.
• Others to come ...

These social factors are very real, and we can safely predict that the need for dating services will remain present in the near future. These considerations also delineate the cultural sensitivity of proposed dating services.

A synthesis of these factors will be presented shortly.


Who are the daters?

How can we trace a portrait of today’s daters? One possibility is to conduct a population survey, to collect the average data, and to construct an average dater. But this technique has been proved to be not very informative, because the population is not monolithic, it doesn’t exhibit a uni-modal distribution. The proper approach it to identify different categories of daters. If we examine the dating industry, we observe different types of niche services/markets. We can consider it as a huge experiment, where different service ideas are tried on the market, and only the good ones survive. Given enough time, every establish niche service/market will represent a real category. The problem is that the dating industry is still young and still on transition. Therefore, we must assume that some niches are not occupied yet, and others that seem to be doing well at this moment will disappear in the near future. Categories are still forming, the industry is still shuffling, but this empirical observation can give us at list an idea about the greater pattern. It’s good enough to use it as a starting point for further speculation, to use theory to trace the greater detail. Once the categories have been identified/proposed, statistical studies can be conducted to establish them on more firm empirical grounds.

If separate categories must be formed in order to give a more detailed and accurate description of daters, it is also true that some characteristics are universal. This is where evolutionary biology, psychology, and neurosciences come into play: their role is to depict the common denominator. Social sciences can also establish some general characteristics, but given our multiethnic/multicultural society, and the huge mentality generation gap observed in modern western societies (characterized by very fast social/cultural changes), caution must be applied. Moreover, in large countries like the U.S. and Canada, the lifestyle differs greatly from one region to another, as opposed to other small European countries that are more homogeneous internally.

To be continued ...

What are the needs of the daters?

Coming soon ...


Dating services and the needs of daters

Coming soon ...


The future of the dating industry

Coming soon ...

Work in progress....

Have any suggestions? You are invited to comment.