What are middle-middle class people like?

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

Work: retired, service jobs, white collar

Education: some college, college graduate

Home:  rent, mostly homeowners

Money and money management: Low, below average, average, above average, to moderate assets

Shop: Ace Hardware, Orbitz.com, FedEx Kinkos, Marshalls, Kohl’s

Read: Audubon, Entrepreneur, Cycle World, Baby Talk, Smithsonian

Watch:  Masterpiece Theater, Family Guy, Scrubs, Univision, Live from Lincoln Center

Drive: Buick Lucerne, Subaru Outback, Mazda 6, Mitsubishi Lancer, Chevrolet Impala

Vacation, play, and travel:  NBA games, sing karaoke, cruise on Norwegian lines.

Memberships: Veteran’s club

Method

PRIZM classifies this group as Midscale, but from a researcher perspective, it is the middle of three groups in the middle. Classification into social class hierarchy depends on many things, but this group is in the middle of all Nielsen groups.  I have aggregated information from the 5 PRIZM market segments classified as Midscale by Nielsen.

Market segmenting makes assumptions about consumption and creates clusters of people based on their consumer characteristics, age, and on where they live.  The Nielsen Company has identified 66 PRIZM market segments, 58 P$YCLE segments, and 53 ConneXions segments, and described them by demographics and lifestyle and media traits.

Commentary

These are not stereotypes, these are consumer behaviors based on research on what people report about themselves.  These data are widely used by marketers in the US.  The underlying assumption here is that social class is reflected in consumer behaviors.  This consumer assumption about social class does not reflect social class as culture or social class as identity.


Also:

What are upper-middle class people like?

What are upper-middle-middle class people like?

What are lower-middle-middle class people like?

What are poor and lower class people like?