A preliminary examination of the continuing significance of social class to marketing: a geodemographic replication

The past decade has witnessed increased commercial use of data obtained unobtrusively from large‐scale geodemographic (GD) systems. However, consumer researchers have paid little attention to the potential of geodemography. Capitalizes on the fact that geodemography and Warnerian social class are underpinned by the same idea, i.e. that individuals resemble their neighbors, sharing many demographic and social‐status characteristics. Uses data from 675,615 households in 34 leisure and recreation categories to replicate, update, and extend findings in the social class literature. Results indicate that social class shapes lifestyle and recreational choices, and media habits; they also support Coleman’s (1983) income use hypotheses, and Levy’s (1966; 1978) media habit conjectures. Results suggest that a threefold classification of social classes (upper, middle and lower) may be more appropriate for predicting recreational choices than the traditional fivefold classification. Supplementing substantive findings, the study exemplifies how large‐scale, secondary databases can be applied in consumer research and offers suggestions to further refine social class measurement techniques.