ABSTRACT
As an application of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in business, geodemographics has evolved rapidly in the past two decades across Europe and North America. Marketers employ the tools to target consumers on the basis that their residential location can be used to predict their purchasing behaviour. The ‘birds of a feather’ principle that two people who live in the same neighbourhood are more likely to have similar characteristics than are two people chosen at random underlies geodemographics. This is extended to the principle that people who live in different neighbourhoods with similar characteristics are likely to have similar purchasing characteristics.
