Geodemographics

Geodemographics uses the close links between where a person lives and the lifestyle choices that the person makes for various economic, social, and political applications. It is the analysis of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of people based on their location, although it is often viewed as a data exploration tool rather than a method of hypothesis investigation. Developments [Page 1216]in geodemographics go hand in hand with advances in geographic information systems (GIS) as geodemographics heavily uses the mapping of classification schemes. Analysis consists of data acquisition and cluster-based classification to produce profile groupings of similar attributes, which are then assigned to contiguous geographic areas. Marketing companies, academia, and government use these classification schemes for a variety of applications, such as predicting the usage of ...