areas are heavily concentrated in London. Outside London these neighbour-
hoods are found in such places as Edinburgh, St Albans and Cambridge.
These neighbourhood areas allow specific patterns of consumption to be
identified. For instance, ACORN type 5 ‘Mature, Well-off Suburbs’ is a sub-
group of category A, group 1 is ‘Wealthy Achievers, Suburban Areas’. This
group is made up of mature suburbs found all over the UK, particularly in
Surrey, Hertfordshire, South Glamorgan and Outer London. Individuals in
this group buy above average levels of fresh and dried pasta, ground cof-
fee, fresh fish and fruit. Ownership of most financial products in this group
is above the national average except for personal pensions. This type of
detailed profile allows for highly sophisticated targeting.
This segmentation approach can be used to aid decision making in a
variety of areas:● Identifying favourable retail locations for a specific retail format.
● The specific mix of products and services delivered in a particular
retail location.
● Decisions on direct mail campaigns.
● The boundaries of specific sales territories.
● Location of poster sites.
● Selection of media.There are criticisms of this approach. It is claimed that all these geodemo-
graphic systems contain inaccuracies because of the difficulties in lining
up the census enumeration districts with postal codes. There are also
problems in reflecting the changes in housing that takes place between
each census.
The geodemographic systems referred to so far are used at a relatively
local level. There have been developments to try and use this approach at a
much larger regional level. Geodemographic techniques have been used on
a European scale to identify consumers who have common characteristics
but may live in different countries. Using demographic (age), economic
(income), cultural (language) and geographic (longitude and latitude) fac-
tors, six Euro-consumer segments can be identified (see Figure 4.10).
This approach illustrates the point that consumers in different countries
can share similar characteristics. For instance, the consumers in segment 4
show more similarities to each other than to other consumers from their
own country. This is the first step at European segmentation; it may well
lead to the identification of sub-segments within these larger groups and
to the ability for marketers to target relatively large geodemographic seg-
ments that transcend national boundaries.■ Behavioural variables
The segmentation approaches that have been discussed so far are all using
characteristics of the consumer as a way of identifying clear groupings.66 Strategic Marketing: Planning and Control