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Abstract

Social Grade is a standard classifier that has been questioned by researchers on numerous occasions over the past thirty years but remains a key element of market research. This thesis presents results of research conducted on the discriminatory ability of Social Grade and other commonly used classification systems.

A systematic random sample of 2000 records was extracted from the 1989 Target Group Index (TGI) database of British Market Research Bureau. Social Grade and other classifiers were then used as classifiers of household usage, purchase, and ownership of consumer products and services. A variety of statistics were then calculated to evaluate how well Social Grade and the other classifiers could discriminate usage, purchase, and ownership of consumer products and services.

Social Grade was shown to clearly provide statistically significant discrimination for; usage and purchase of food products, ownership of consumer durables and use of service products. Social Grade was unable to provide statistically significant discrimination between regular users of different brands of household food products. Social Grade provided low levels of discriminatory power for usage and purchase of food products, consumer durables and service products. Social Grade indicated very poor discriminatory power when used to discriminate brand usage.

In general, the other socio-economic, demographic and geo demographic classifiers did provide statistically significant discrimination of the purchase and use of food products, ownership of consumer durables and use of services but did not provide statistically significant discrimination between brands of food products. All these classifiers provided low levels of discriminatory power in all product categories.

The implications of this study relate to three main areas in which Social Grading is used. Firstly, Social Grade classification is commonly used as a control variable in sample surveys in stratification, establishing quota controls or post stratification. Secondly, Social Grade is used as a common system of classification in different data sets and, thence, as a linking variable between those data sets. In this situation Social Grade is required to provide consistent sub-groups across many data sources. The final major use of Social Grade is in the analysis of survey information. Social Grade is used to locate concentrations of groups of social or marketing interest or in the discrimination or prediction of behaviour. The results of this study pose many doubts on the suitability of Social Grade in each of these main areas in which it is used.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HG Finance
Departments:	Bayes Business School Bayes Business School > Bayes Business School Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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