2.4 Demographic Data

As we mentioned, demographics have long been used by marketers to segment and target consumers. Based on census population data, private firms such as Acxiom, CACI, ChoicePoint, DataQuick, Experian, Equifax, Polk, Trans Union, and others aggregate this data with additional lifestyle and socioeconomic information, reselling it at the zip-code or specific physical-address levels and matching it by various keys, such as an address telephone or Social Security number. To gain an understanding of the type of data that these aggregators provide, we will look at the InfoBase product from Acxiom.

Acxiom, like others in this industry, offers a wide variety of U.S. consumer, business, and telephone data. Their main product, InfoBase, includes mailing lists, database or file enhancement, analytical services, and telephone and e-mail data. InfoBase provides demographic, socioeconomic, and lifestyle data on individuals, households, geographic levels, and businesses. Acxiom, for example, can match household information to an address and return the data attributes listed in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1: Acxiom Infobase Basic Data Profile
Truck/motorcycle/RV owner Aggregate value of vehicles Adult age ranges Children's age ranges Occupation-first and second individual Homeowner/renter Length of residence Dwelling size Marital status First and second individual name and gender Verification date Mail order buyer Household status indicator	First and second individual age ranges Working woman Mail responders Credit card indicator Presence of children Age range of individual Number of adults Estimated income code New car buyer/leased car Known number of vehicles owned Dominant vehicle lifestyle Apartment number DMA do not mail/phone flags

Acxiom InfoBase basic data profile

Using public sources gathered from applications, registrations, and licenses for new corporations with secretaries of state, fictitious business names, business licenses, and trade names filed with either state or counties, Acxiom also aggregates information on companies. For business entities, Acxiom can provide the type of information listed in Table 2.2.

Table 2.2: Partial List of Type of Information or Companies Provided by Acxiom
Business Name Tradestyle and Mailing Street Address Primary SIC Code Census Tract MSA Code Mailing Address Lines DSF Delivery Type State & County Code Population Code Phone Number (w/ area code) Fax Area Code & Phone Contact Name/Title Self-Employed Flag Standard Industry Market Title Standard Industry Market Function Age of Contact Gender of Contact Marital Status of Contact Suffix of Key Contact (i.e. CPA. MD) Owner Type Owner Home Phone Number Owner Birthday Number In Family PC Owner Owner Gender Type of Company Individual or Firm Identifier Owner Occupied	Ethnicity Sales Volume Code at Location Location Employee Size Code Actual Location Employee Size Code Sales Growth Range Line of Business Headquarters. Subsidiary Indicator Business/Government Indicator Public Company Indicator Business Filing Type/Sort Code Year Business Established/Start Date Business Filing Date Professional Flag Secondary SIC Code Import/Export Flag Estimates of telecommunication and utility purchases Products Manufactured Fortune 500 Building Square Feet Actual Number of Stories Unit Count Projected Utility Expenses Type of Heating Type of Cooling Year Built Plant Size Assessed Property Value

As with other data providers, Acxiom also offers analytic services, including a data profile analysis offering, which does a comparison of one set of businesses with another set. This profile service enables the user to perform a statistical comparison of a firm against other companies in the same industry from the Infobase reference group or file. For example, using this type of profiling service, money-laundering investigators might ferret out dummy business entities set up as fronts, which appear legitimate but are in fact producing no revenue.

Neighborhood profiles are also available from these demographic data providers, such as CACI, which at the zip-code level offer an ACORN (a classification of residential neighborhoods) database, a geodemographic segmentation system. ACORN classifies U.S. households into 9 groups and 40 distinct consumer clusters, profiling by demographics, such as median age, socioeconomic (median household income), residential (median home value), and preferences in their spending patterns and lifestyle choices. The major groups include the following consumer clusters:

Group 1: Affluent families
Group 2: Upscale households
Group 3: Up-and-coming singles
Group 4: Retirement styles
Group 5: Young mobile adults
Group 6: City dwellers
Group 7: Factory and farm communities
Group 8: Downtown residents
Group 9: Nonresidential neighborhoods

These types of neighborhood demographics provide lifestyle information about individuals at the zip-code level, which traditionally has been used by marketers. The following is a partial description of Group 7, Factory and Farm Communities:

Demographic data: The demographic profile of these communities is similar to the U.S. population: family-oriented and predominantly white (but also including blacks, American Indians, and Hispanics). The median age is between 33 and 45 years. Most are married couples with children.
Socioeconomic data: Their median household income ranges from $27,000 to $40,400. Employment is average; unemployment below average. Most work in manufacturing, farming, mining, or construction.
Residential data: These households are in rural neighborhoods located in the Midwest and South and also in urban areas throughout the United States. Occupants live in single-family and mobile homes. Their homes are owned-occupied and valued between $52,800 and $86,600.
Preferences data: This market style is rural, but not remote. Commuting long distances to work is a way of life. Most of the households own vehicles. They hunt, fish, and listen to country music. They also enjoy eating fast food and renting videos. They own pets, have personal loans, and watch TV.

Group 7, Factory and Farm Communities, consists of seven lifestyle clusters:

Middle America: top vegetable gardeners, high cat ownership, country music, campers, chain saws
Young frequent movers: loans, trucks, SUVs, videos, country music, pets (cats and dogs), hunt, fish
Rural industrial workers: top dog owners, high used-American truck buyers, country music
Prairie farmers: top cat owners, top used-car buyers, high home improvements, high borrowers
Small-town working families: hunt and fish, trucks, videos, diets, country music, women's magazines
Rustbelt neighborhoods: needlework, movies, sitcoms, soap operas, bifocals, lottery, news tabloids
Heartland communities: high vegetable gardeners, large American cars, campers, chainsaws, tools

Typically, marketers use these types of demographics for segmenting their customers and prospects in order to construct composites or profiles of their most profitable and loyal clients. However, these same types of demographics may be applied to overlay additional information about suspects in order to develop composites for investigative data mining applications.