Who lives in Costa Mesa, California?

Costa Mesa is a roughly 111,000-person city in central Orange County, dense and built out, that punches well above its size in two industries at once. It is the capital of action sports, home base for Vans, Volcom, Hurley, and RVCA, and it wraps around South Coast Plaza and the Segerstrom arts campus, one of the highest-volume retail and performing-arts clusters in the country. The defining trait of the people here is how early they reach for new things: about 51% are early adopters of technology, close to double the 27% national share.

The age curve sits a touch younger than the country, with the 25-44 bands fuller than average and the over-65 share lighter. That working-age, design-and-retail-adjacent mix is the engine behind the consumption patterns that follow.

The way these residents make decisions tracks the country almost exactly. They are not unusually impulsive and not unusually slow to commit, so manufactured countdowns and last-chance scarcity will fall flat. Where they separate is appetite for the new: openness runs about six points above national, the clearest tilt in their personality, fitting a town whose paycheck depends on the next board, the next colorway, the next launch.

The rest of the profile is close to baseline. Conscientiousness and a faint lift in sensitivity to stress are within a couple of points of average, and warmth and outgoingness land squarely at the national mark.

Values lean conscientious without tipping into activism. Strict ethical buyers run about 11% here against roughly 7% nationally, and the share who never weigh ethics drops to about 20% from a national third, so a sourcing or labor story is read rather than ignored. Environmental concern moves the same direction, with the unconcerned bucket thinning out.

One countercurrent matters for anyone selling here. Strong loyalty to local independents is actually softer than the national norm, around 9% versus 16%, which fits a place organized around a megamall and global brand headquarters rather than a Main Street. Trust in big companies sits at the national level.

Cut the cord and assume the TV ad never lands: about 52% are cord-cutters, well above national, and only roughly 17% listen to no podcasts at all, far below the national third. Audio and streaming are the open doors. They are also less likely to shrug an ad off as neutral, so a message with a clear point of view gets a verdict instead of being tuned out.

On social, Instagram over-indexes while Facebook runs lighter than average, matching a younger, visually fluent crowd. Lead with image and short video on Instagram, back it with podcast and streaming placements, and skip the linear-TV buy.

These households buy constantly. About 39% shop weekly, double the national rate, and they return purchases just as freely, with roughly half sending things back frequently. That is the rhythm of people who try first and sort it out later, and it means a generous, frictionless return policy is closer to a requirement than a perk.

Underneath the churn sits real discipline. Aggressive savers make up about 34% against a quarter nationally, and the non-saver share shrinks, so the constant buying runs on Orange County income rather than on credit stretched thin.

Health is where this audience is most committed. Almost nobody is indifferent to it, under 4% against about a fifth of the country, and roughly half describe themselves as proactive about it, with a serious obsessive minority on top. This is a surf-and-skate, beach-adjacent population that treats fitness as identity, not chore.

That carries into the mind as well as the body. Openness about mental wellness runs well above national, with the private share cut to about 9% from 18%, so talking plainly about therapy, recovery, and rest reads as normal here rather than risky.