CLARITAS PRIZM Resources

Lifestyle and behavior precision segmentation

Literature

> PRIZM Brochure
> PRIZM Successful Direct Marketing Applications
> PRIZM Methodology Summary

Technical Specifications

All Nielsen Claritas segmentation systems share a common segmentation methodology in the creation and definition of the segments–their assignment to households and neighborhoods, and their creation of geographic distributions and behavioral profiles. What makes each system unique is the behavioral data used in system development, in addition to several unique data elements that drive segment definition.

For PRIZM, the behavioral data was centered on media, retail and automotive products and the unique drivers are urbanization and socioeconomic rank–as both are strong predictors for a large variety of media usage and product purchase behaviors.

While the term urbanization is widely used, there is no standard definition. Some Federal sources may describe an area (or market) as urban–but what they really mean is metropolitan and they rarely distinguish the center city from the suburbs or the booming employment centers on the metro fringe. PRIZM does all that and more using two essential inputs: the population density of the area being assigned, and its relationship to the highest density center (or peak) of that market.

Nielsen Claritas maintains five levels of urbanization: Urban, Suburban, Second City, Town and Rural. PRIZM collapses the latter two into Town & Country leading to four urbanization classes within the PRIZM system. These four urbanization classes are combined with three levels of affluence to create the 14 PRIZM Social Groups that are core to understanding the system’s topology.

In addition to household demographics that include age, income, family composition and homeownership, PRIZM employs another proprietary measure that combines neighborhood data for income, education, occupation and home value. The socioeconomic rank (SER) allows the segmentation model to better utilize all four measures in a simplified manner that minimizes issues of collinearity (redundancy and overlap) while maintaining their strong predictive power for a large number of affluence- and home-based products and services.

Learn more about how PRIZM can provide you with the most precise way to target your prospects.