Claritas is Full of It

PressControlShift's post on Do It Yourself Narrowcasting was really interesting. It was great to see an example of the lifestyle segmentation done by Claritas, but I don't exactly trust their assessments.

I looked up my neighborhood in Kansas City, where I lived most of my adult life (64111), which is an eclectic urban mix of ethnicities, ages and incomes. One of the segments listed were "Urban Elders," which is definitely a part of the neighborhood.

Claritas describes "Urban Elders" as " ... communities have high concentrations of Hispanics and African-Americans, and tend to be downscale, with singles living in older apartment rentals." It also lists the median household income as $21,908.

After all that, it says these people shop at Banana Republic.

There is indeed a Banana Republic very close to my old neighborhood, but I seriously doubt anyone who is over 55 and living on $21,000/year shops there. They aren't paying $50 for a shirt at Banana, they are paying $5 at Walmart.

I pity the Banana Republic executive who decides to target their new marketing campaign to this segment.