Claritas’s PRIZM divides geographic areas into 68 segments “according to socioeconomic rank, including income, education, occupation, and home value as well as 11 Lifestage Groups and 14 Social Groups. LifeStage groups are based on age, affluence, and the presence of children. The Social Groups are based on affluence and whether they live in a city, second-tier city, the suburbs, or small towns and rural areas.” Purchase behavior in 10 categories and media behaviors in eight categories are included. Here is a list of the 68 segments: https://claritas360.claritas.com/mybestsegments/#segDetails The
PRIZM zip code lookup feature is free and has the following data: households by income, household composition, population by age, and population by race and ethnicity. The latter is the only cross-tab. Also, the top five segments and descriptions are provided. You do not know how large that segment is in the zip code (problem with ordinal data.) The data can identify where your target market but not who it is. It is better for, say, where to open a retail outlet than determining which households are potential customers. Segments provide demographic traits (e.g., urbanicity, income, income-producing assets; household technology; age ranges; presence of kids; homeownership, employment levels, education levels) and lifestyle and media traits (e.g., product purchases, restaurants visited; donations, etc.). More data is available in the paid version. https://claritas360.claritas.com/mybestsegments/#zipLookup
The problem is that a zip code may encompass an area outside your trading area. The zip code we live in Florida (34639) is almost 27 square miles with 24,000 occupants. The U.S. Postal Service provides more free data than PRIZM. The data includes: age; gender; race; families vs. singles; households with kids; children by age; real estate and housing; year housing was built; housing occupancy; vacancy reasons; owner-occupied home values; rental properties by number of rooms; cost of monthly rent including utilities; employment status; average household income over time; household income; annual individual earnings; sources of household income; household investment income; household retirement income; source o earnings; means of transportation to work of workers 16 and older; travel time to work; schools and education; and school enrollment. This information should complement PRIZM and offer convergent validity. Similar to how PRIZM can supplement an organization’s customer relationship management software. https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/34639/
