Classifying People by Where They Live

July 2004

This half-day seminar commemorated the 25th anniversary of the launch of the geodemographics industry in this country. Three founders of the industry led the seminar - Ken Baker, the first market researcher to classify respondents by geodemographics; Richard Webber, originator of the ACORN and MOSAIC classification systems; and Peter Mouncey, one of the first clients to apply the new technique.

Ken Baker opened the proceedings with an entertaining account of the origins of geodemographics in 1979 and described the first classification of residential neighbourhoods.

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Richard Webber spoke next, and treated the audience to a fascinating tour of neighbourhoods in Britain. With the aid of a large collection of street photographs, Richard really made geodemographic segmentation 'come alive', adding his own insights to explain the characteristics and lifestyles of the residents in each classification type.

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Ken Baker then returned to demonstrate how geodemographic classifiers discriminate in particular markets and explained how this translates to a wide range of applications such as market research sampling and retail location analysis.

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In the final presentation, Peter Mouncey gave a wide-ranging review of how geodemographics can be used to manage customer relationships. Peter explained how geodemographic data complements other information held on customer databases and included examples of geodemographic analyses using different systems.

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All agreed that the seminar had been well worthwhile, and the audience of eighty delegates on a sunny Thursday morning proved the continuing interest in geodemographic techniques.