Finished a couple books in the last couple weeks. First, this last Wednesday I read “The Clustered World : How We Live, What We Buy, and What It All Means About Who We Are”, which seems to be a popular book amongst the blogosphere. The information in this book should be required reading for anyone launching a major consumer product as it explains and outlines the PRIZM cluster makeup, which is a tool to help marketers create detailed lifestyle pictures, including the food you eat, what you drink, the magazines you read, what TV shows you watch, your leisure activities and what worries you. (find out what cluster you belong by going http://cluster2.claritas.com/YAWYL/Default.wjsp?System=WL).
From the appendix, page 305, The Universal Principles of Clustering:
“1. People and Birds of a Feather Flock Together…
2. The Mass Market Is Dead…
3. There’s Little Connection Between Income and Lifestyle….
4. The Super-Rich Live Differently from the Rest of Us — But Not from Each Other…
5. Culture Does Not Honor Political Boundaries….
6. Everyone Collects Something…
7. Everybody Complains About Junk Mail, But Nobody Does Anything About It…
8. No Home Is Complete Without a Tropy….
9. There’s Always an Exception That Proves the Rule….
10. Every Community Has a Historian.“