Social Class

Krech, Crutchfield & Ballachey say that social class is a division of society made up or persons possessing certain common social characteristics which are taken to qualify them for intimate, equal status relations with one another, and which restrict their interaction with members of other social classes.

Once upon a time society was only split into 3 class systems as the majority of people were of working class and therefore regarded as lower class, then there were the middle classes and a tiny minority of upper class. Nowadays though society can be split into as many as 8 classes: poverty, upper lower class, working class, lower middle, middle middle, upper middle class, upper class and luxurious upper class. This can be compared to an animal pecking order whereby the people at the upper end of the hierarchy have better access to resources such as education, housing and consumer goods. People will try to improve their social ranking by moving up the order whenever possible. We tend to have a desire to improve our social ranking and to let other know when we have done so by bragging about it, and this can often be at the core of marketing strategies.

 

It is important, however, to note that when measuring social class, the measures were designed for the typical ‘nuclear family’ mentioned in one of my previous blogs, with a male wage earner in the middle of his career and a female full time homemaker. It also does not take into consideration subjective social class for example the class someone identifies with but may not belong to.

 

By taking a survey at quizfarm.com I was able to answer a series of questions to establish which class I fell into. The results were that I am Upper Middle Class. 

 

Social class will be important to the marketer because the place that we have in the social structure reflects on how much money is spent and what it is spent on. For instance social class is a better indicator of purchases that have a symbolic aspect but low to moderate prices for example cosmetics or liqueurs. Income is a better indicator of purchase behaviour for non-symbolic, high expenditure products e.g. fridge freezers. Both social class and income data are needed to predict behaviour with expensive and symbolic products such as cars and homes.

 

But is income a sufficiently good indicator of social class? Personally I feel that its not just income that determines your social class but where you went to school, how you were brought up, where you grew up, where you live, what hobbies you have, possibly your level of intelligence, the list could go on!!

Have a look at these links:

• The frost report-social class 
  
• Social class sketch
• Understanding class (i know this guys voice is boring but it is interesting)