Technology demographics
Posted in Tech/Development on: Wednesday, August 9, 2006 by Paul Boag
For a long time marketers have made use of various demographic scales to classify different types of people. Well now, thanks to research carried out at the University College London it is possible to classify people by their use of technology.
Using information from the most recent UK census and data firm Experian, the researchers at UCL have created 23 "e-types". These 23 e-types are themselves organised into seven broader categories including:
- E-unengaged
- E-marginalised
- Becoming engaged
- E for entertainment and shopping
- E-independents
- Instrumental E-users
- E-business users
- E- experts
However, the researchers have gone further than simply creating the 23 e-types. They have mapped those types onto the 1.7 million British postcodes. By entering a postcode on their site, you can see the e-type for that postcode. This provides an incredible granularity down to approximately 17 households!
Unsurprisingly the ability to see the e-type of your individual postcode has created a lot of interest in the press. However, it is not the postcode functionality that particularly excites me. Although knowing the technical literacy of a postcode is interesting, it does not really help me as a web designer. I cannot think of a single site, which I have worked on that is aimed at a specific geographic area.
What I find more interesting is the definition of the e-types. This could prove a very powerful tool for web designers to understand the target audience for a site. Used in conjunction with personas I see this as an excellent way quantify how users will interact with your site.
5 Comments
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Its an interesting concept, but as you say of relatively little use. I tried my postcode and it came up with A06-Elderly Marginalised. Obviously the demographic has changed significantly since the 2001 survey.
It would be interesting to see the data that they used to generate the e-types, or is that 5 years out of date as well?
BTW, nice spelling mistake – ‘UCI’.
Simon
I just tried my postcode and it insulted me. It appears I’m only a small time net shopper. The cheek!
I think my wife would disagree though.
Ha – I got A : E-unengaged and type A03 : Technology as fantasy.
That actually sounds about right for the area I live, but it’s still funny.
Would help if they where to cover N.Ireland. There is me thinking its part of the UK. Maybe not
If you live in Yorkshire are you classified as E-by Gum!
Sorry.