ABSTRACT
First the United States and then Canada and Europe have witnessed the development of what are termed “geodemographic systems” over the past thirty years. Direct marketers use these computerized systems to pinpoint mailings, and business planners use the systems to inform their planning for the best sites for new businesses and other facilities. Born through the merging of public data with private computing resources, the premise of geodemographics is that one can profitably divide the landscape into discrete spaces occupied by homogeneous groups of households and individuals. This has become a guiding practice of the marketing industry.
