The Clustering of America: Demographic Trends & Market Segmentation Analysis | Perfect for Business Strategy & Market Research

This book forever changed how I understand American society and culture. The book was published two decades ago but structurally it is still relevant today. Geodemographic analysis allows the lifestyle, personality, politics, education, consumption of a person to be analyzed by their ZIP+2 code. You are similar to your neighbors. And people in similar ZIP+2 cluster, though living in a different metropolitan area, will have more in common with you than people in a differing cluster type who live in an adjacent ZIP to you. The data is taken from everywhere: credit cards, voter polls, car registration, consumer participation cards, magazine subscriptions. It can be fun to try to overlay your own impressions of peoples you have met against the 50+ clusters. Which one are you in?This book is an interesting overview of how the Claritas system of neighborhood clustering works. It was published in the 80s, and the details and demographics are far outdated at this point in time. So don't get this book for the specifics (of which, there are chapters and chapters), but rather for the broad explanations, which are still useful.