Richard Webber’s book The Predictive Postcode breaks new ground by using the practice of geodemographic classification to call into doubt a number of methodological and taxonomic assumptions, which continue to underlie research – such as the over-arching role of class and other person-level demographics in “explaining” behaviour, the belief in ordinal ranking as opposed to qualitative categories based on cluster analysis and the importance of numerical rather than visual clues in the characterisation of neighbourhoods.

In this lecture Richard tests the relevance of geodemographic categories to the understanding of issues of current social and political importance and demonstrate how a more nuanced typology (such as of different types of coastal community and different types of rural community) shed useful new insights on specific issues such as the debate over integration, problems of low educational attainment among the white working classes and the regeneration of seaside resorts.

 

Venue

MRS
The Old Trading House, 15 Northburgh Street,London,EC1V 0JR

Richard Webber is best known as the originator of the UK’s leading geodemographic classifications, Acorn and Mosaic. For many years he managed the micromarketing divisions of first CACI and then Experian. In recent years he has championed the use of personal and family names as a means of inferring people’s cultural background, a tool now used by Britain’s principal political parties for the targeting of their election campaigns. A Fellow of MRS and the Institute of Direct Marketing, he is currently a visiting Professor in the department of Geography at Kings College London.

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