Going beyond demographic segments, market criteria and income range, consumption is now motivated not only by a person’s financial parameters, but also by her tastes and lifestyles.
Unclassed is a pattern of behavior in which people increasingly become the protagonists of their own aspirations and do not necessarily seek to attain only the ideals of the higher social classes. This emergent behavior gives people the opportunity to access not only common references regardless of their class of origin, but also to find multiple channels to expose their voices and potentially influence many others.
As a result, influences on behavior and consumption are no longer necessarily analyzed according to the top-down logic of society’s income pyramid. Consequently, there is another challenge to face now: it’s time to leave our comfort zone and go beyond the understanding of market segments, income level or social class and to start thinking about affinities and especially about people.
The world has changed, and with it its interpretation. The dualistic understanding between the bottom and the top of the class pyramid alone is not a good measure of a population’s social aspirations. This is our social multiplicity, and is greatly influenced by the brand new world of information. What was once a pyramid has become a prism.
Complex and paradoxal customers are making companies rethink the way they segment market. This classification is not limited only by social class, “economic power”, age-range or gender. To “Unclass” is to take a deep look inside people in order to understand their real motivations; only this way it will be possible to group them: by affinity.
What happens when demographic fronteers are not enough to classify consumer profiles anymore? How to predict the behaviour of a generation increasingly fluid? For a research method to be efficient, it needs see beyond the hierarchy of “normal”. The norm is dead, and with that, it does not make sense anymore to classify consumers by gender, age or social class.
It’s time to step out of the comfort zone and go beyond the comprehension of market shares, income range or social class; it’s time to start thinking about affinities and, most important of all, people. Unclassed is a behaviour tendency in which people become the protagonists of their own actions, they don’t want to simply appropriate ideals of the higher social strata anymore.
