Claritas is Full of It
PressControlShift's post on Do It Yourself Narrowcasting was really interesting. It was great to see an example of the lifestyle segmentation done by Claritas, but I don't exactly trust their assessments.
I looked up my neighborhood in Kansas City, where I lived most of my adult life (64111), which is an eclectic urban mix of ethnicities, ages and incomes. One of the segments listed were "Urban Elders," which is definitely a part of the neighborhood.
Claritas describes "Urban Elders" as " ... communities have high concentrations of Hispanics and African-Americans, and tend to be downscale, with singles living in older apartment rentals." It also lists the median household income as $21,908.
After all that, it says these people shop at Banana Republic.
There is indeed a Banana Republic very close to my old neighborhood, but I seriously doubt anyone who is over 55 and living on $21,000/year shops there. They aren't paying $50 for a shirt at Banana, they are paying $5 at Walmart.
I pity the Banana Republic executive who decides to target their new marketing campaign to this segment.
2 Comments:
I could not agree with you more. I put in my zip code in Michigan and they were WAY off! The description of my neighborhood is nothing like what is actually is except for the income. Which for them is not hard to figure out because all they have to look at his the average prices of homes in the area. I also feel bad for businesses who take this site seriously.
I also had the same problem when I looked up my hometown. I was disappointed to see that the insight into my area was completely misinterpreted and far off the map. Like you I saw inconsistencies between the different ways my neighborhood was described and quite frankly they just did not add up. I think this site could be useful in the future once it works some of the kinks out.
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