Segmentation of households and/or population into distinct groups, each with different needs and behaviour is a widely used technique in marketing, and where retailers or other service providers in private or public sectors need to understand the characteristics and behaviour of their local population.
Combining demographic data with location information – so called geo-demographics- to establish what kind of people live in which kind of neighbourhoods has proved very useful in practice.
We have a long record in producing geo-demographic classifications, since members of our original group produced a National Classification of Residential Neighbourhoods published in the Geographical Magazine in 1980 – and which eventually led to the commercial ACORN classification.
There are a number of commercial and open source classifications available. They use using census and supplementary survey data which assign census output areas and/or postcodes to a particular group or type. They are usually hierarchical – with relatively few (typically 5 to 15 ) broad groups, which then split into many more individual types. Although they vary widely in the way they name the different groups and types (from the relatively neutral to the outlandishly patronising) the two main organising dimensions are income/prosperity (‘high’, ‘average’, ‘low’) and life-stage ‘young’, ‘middle/family’, ‘old’.
One set of group labels are: ‘Wealthy Achievers’, ‘Urban Prosperity’, ‘Comfortably Off’, ‘Moderate Means’ and ‘Hard Pressed’, another is ‘Alpha territory’, ‘Professional rewards’, ‘Rural solitude’, ‘Small town diversity’, ‘Active retirement’, ‘Suburban mindsets’, ‘Careers and kids’, ‘New homemakers’, ‘Ex-council community’, ‘Claimant cultures’, ‘Upper floor living’, ‘Elderly needs’, ‘Industrial heritage’, ‘Terraced melting pot’, ‘Liberal opinions’.
An ‘open source’ classification of census output areas is available from the ONS:
ONS neighbourhood classification methods
Blue collar communities, City living, Countryside, Prospering suburbs, Constrained by circumstances, Typical traits, Multicultural.
The CES Classification of output areas based on the 2001 census is set out in the following two tables showing respectively the 12 main groups and the 53 individual types within the groups. It may be modified using 2011 census.