Cambridge, MA -- Urban dwellers use technology to gather information, to be entertained and to organize their harried lives.

Suburbanites binge on e-commerce while surfing Wall Street with the bulls and the bears.

Wired country folk participate in technology's simpler things -- electronically shooting the breeze and armchair bidding for bargains.

When it comes to how you use technology, location, location, location is the determining factor -- not socioeconomic demographics.

Technology researcher Forrester Research, Inc. recently found that the city mouse doesn't click with the county mouse when it comes to attitudes about technology, technological access and online behavior.

Both service providers and regulatory bureaucrats can benefit from the study by honing technology services and the rules that govern them to fit the needs of consumers based on where they live.

"Where The Wired Consumer Lives," a Forrester study of 80,000 U.S. households, found distinct differences in how consumers' technological lives are influenced by the part of town they call home.

Urban dwellers

City slickers are technology's best friends. The go online both to enjoy and cope with urban life, Forrester found.

News, movie times and entertainment reviews online -- along with their propensity to use personal digital assistants -- help city residents manage their frantic time-is-money lives. Their addictive need for speed is also evidenced by 4 percent of them who have broadband access -- the largest percentage of any group, according to Forrester's report.

Urban residents are also more motivated by entertainment than career and family, compared to rural and suburban residents. More of them than any other group also log online for 30 or more hours per week -- often to buy books, music and food, while checking out city guides to get their night-life fix.

Suburbanites

Cul-de-sac Jacks and Jills are just as optimistic about technology as urban residents, but tend to be more technologically well-rounded. They are equally motivated by career, family and the entertaining aspects of life.

They like the Web's reference and stock quote sites and they own more personal computers and cell phones than the other two groups, but use them less -- much like those backyards swallowed up by rarely used swimming pools.

Suburbanites go online more often than city dwellers, often to purchase big ticket items including cars and jewelry, Forrester says.

Rural residents

Most rural residents, 54.1 percent of them, are pessimistic about technology, but are more family oriented. They use technology to create extended families online. Because they are less likely to live near people with similar interests, they are more likely to gab away in chat rooms and look for deals at auctions, both to create virtual communities for themselves.

Among all groups, rural residents are least likely to have PDAs, cell phones and personal computers.

What the study reveals is that the old refrain "You can take a person out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the person," doesn't apply when technology is considered.

"Because consumers in different areas use technology differently, few Internet business models apply equally well to downtowners, suburbanites, and rural residents," Forrester said.

E-commerce sites, information providers, and Internet service providers should customize services to consumers' location rather than try to create universal appeal. Likewise, government policy should consider location differences before introducing regulation to mandate universal service.

Forrester recommends:

Published: August 2, 2000

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.