Big data: Does your postal code define your lifestyle?
Big data: Does your postal code define your lifestyle?
By Yshmael Cabana
Toronto-based marketing service company Environics Analytics (EA) unveiled its new “population segmentation system” called PRIZM5 that is used to show pieces of data about the communities in Canada.
In order to connect quickly with today’s consumers, marketing entities often create strong emotional appeals based on “psychographics.” While demographics show the target market’s hard data (age, location, marital status, ethnicity, etc), psychographics gives a snapshot at a different angle, including qualitative data of people’s attitudes, beliefs, desires, and needs. Marketers use these kind of latent class analyses to enable client businesses better identify and target consumers who may be interested in purchasing the products or services they offer. Prizm5 determines 68 segments that are ranked by socioeconomic status and are applied to zones in around 750,000 postal codes nationwide. These segments are then sorted geographically according to the closest fit to average makeup of the neighbourhood. Each of the groups is meant to constitute roughly 2 per cent (2500 to 8000 people) of the population.
There are obvious shifts in the Canadian population since previous versions of Prizm, now on its third generation. Since it was started in 2004 by EA, which buys data from Canada Revenue Agency at the census tract level and postal code data from credit bureaus, the data sold by agencies are claimed to be anonymous and aggregated with no individual credit information be inferred.
Among the different lifestyle types identified in the report are segments that include the rapid increase of foreign-born residents. Statistics Canada said two-thirds of population growth in Canada’s biggest cities last year was due to new arrivals.
A sample of the population profile for the postal code M3H 1S8 (in the emerging Filipino town in Toronto) is classified under “Newcomers Rising.” In particular, this segment is described as concentrated in older city neighbourhoods in Ontario predominantly made up of young workers with downscale income immigrants, who are “willing to sacrifice time with their family to advance their career.” About 10 percent are Filipino, the highest concentration in Canada.
Some anecdotes are too specific and some of the conclusions are a bit of a stretch. Subjective as the data may seem, it still is interesting to see what your postal code says (as summarized by one of Canada’s largest marketing companies) about perceptions of who you are, what things you buy into, what you expect of the world around you, and the emotional associations that go along with these.
Find out which Environics Analytics-designated lifestyle segment is most associated with your neighbourhood http://www.environicsanalytics.ca/prizm5.
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