Environics

In conjunction with experts at The Centre for Spatial Economics (C4SE) Environics Analytics has created Estimates & Projections of key demographic variables at the small area level. The current-year estimates and projections are created using a combination of traditional demographic methods combined with cutting-edge macroeconomic modeling, advanced spatial trend analysis, and exclusive databases.

These variables included population and households, labour force variables, average household incomes and income distributions. With few exceptions EA used the C4SE projections as the target in undertaking small area estimates and projections.

HouseholdSpend provides current estimates of average annual expenditures for 240 categories of goods and services used by Canadian households—everything from mortgage payments, household furnishings and utilities to vitamins, mobile phones, footwear and games of chance. This wide-ranging database lets you analyze potential expenditures by both average dollars per household and total dollars spent for any geographic level—from the entire nation down to a small trade area—regardless of where a consumer made the purchase. HouseholdSpend is produced annually with dissemination area disposable income data from our DEP and PRIZM C2 segment spending patterns based on a recent Survey of Household Spending conducted by Statistics Canada.

Daytime population is an estimate of total population for each Dissemination Area during daytime hours. Data sources used are the 2006 Census, Environics Analytics’ 2013 population estimates along with business locations and sizes from infoCanada.

Variables:

• Total Population
• Daytime Population at Home
  -0 to 14 years
  -15 to 64 years
  -65 years and over
• Daytime Population at Work

The infoCANADA business databases are compiled from over 200,000 sources including telephone directories, annual reports, press releases, city and industry directories, news items /periodicals, and new business listings. The databases also undergo an annual telephone verification process.

The Business Profiles database provides clients with summaries of over 1.25 million Canadian businesses. For each census dissemination area, the number of businesses by industry class, number of employees by class and annual sales volume by class are available for analysis. Reports, rankings and maps can be developed for postal, census and user-defined geographic areas.

The Business Locations database tabulates 1.4 million individual Canadian businesses by 4-digit SIC code and latitude/longitude coordinates.

The standard file is provided in dBase format, allowing it to be imported into mapping applications such as MapInfo Professional and ArcView.

PCensus Users also receive, at no extra cost, the Business Locations database in PCensus format. This database can be used to:

• Summarize the businesses in any geographic area by SIC code, Sales and Number of employees (Similar to Business Profiles.
• Display SIC data for any business.
• Using the PCensus Target Filtering feature, display all businesses in a study area that have a specified SIC code.

PRIZM C2 is the second generation of the popular consumer segmentation system that classifies all Canadians into one of 66 lifestyle types–with names like Cosmopolitan Elite, Electric Avenues, Les Chics and Lunch at Tim’s. The system has been updated with the 2006 Census, newly released Social Values from Environics Research and 2013 Estimates and Projections.

PRIZM C2 can be used to improve the execution of many business strategies: customer profiling and acquisition, cross-selling and site selection, strategic planning and media buying. It has wide application for marketers in a variety of industries, including financial services, packaged goods, retail, telecommunications, government agencies, not-for-profits, media and automotive industries. In today’s fragmented marketplace, you need to find the customers most receptive to your products and services. But who are they? Where do they live? What are they like? And how can you reach them with your message? The answer to all these questions is PRIZM C2, the most powerful marketing tool available to deliver your products and offers to the right people using the most effective media.

PRIZM C2 Captures the Nation

PRIZM C2 from Environics Analytics is the industry-leading consumer segmentation system that classifies all Canadians into one of 66 lifestyle types. It’s based on the most important drivers of consumer behaviour: demographics, lifestyles and values. With PRIZM C2’s ability to link every neighbourhood and postal code to one of 66 segments, you can implement a variety of critical marketing applications: customer profiling and acquisition, cross-selling and site selection, strategic planning and media buying. And PRIZM C2 stands alone among consumer segmentation models by linking geodemographics and product preferences to psychographics, while incorporating “Social Values” data from Environics Research. With PRIZM C2, you can now understand the hearts and minds of your customers, designing products and crafting messages that reflect their preferences and their perspectives.

To build PRIZM C2, Environics Analytics analyzed over 1,700 demographic variables from the Census conducted by Statistics Canada. The system then sorted the nation’s approximately 55,000 neighbourhoods and their 32 million residents into one of the 66 lifestyle segments and 18 social groups characterized by affluence, urbanity, ethnicity and language. Then gigabytes’ worth of data from multiple sources were integrated to create in-depth portraits of Canadian consumers. When your company links its customer database to PRIZM C2 segments or groups, the result is an accurate portrait of how your targeted consumers behave—whether they prefer luxury cars to subcompacts, tofu to tamales, or radio to podcasts. Even better, you learn what’s important to them for your marketing message: owning leading-edge technology, escaping stress, belonging to the global village or expressing a regional identity. The PRIZM C2 poster provides you with a snapshot of each segment.

The PRIZM C2 system captures Canada’s consumer society in all its diversity. There are predominantly French speaking clusters, ethnic clusters and clusters from urban, suburban, exurban, town and rural Canada. Presented with this splintered marketplace, PRIZM C2 becomes a powerful tool to match your company’s products and services to those most receptive to them.

 
 

From Mainstream Marketing to Cutting Edge Innovation

Consumer segmentation systems originated 30 years ago when Claritas Inc. developed the first geodemographic-based model for the U.S. It worked on the sociological premise that “birds of a feather flock together,” that is, people with similar demographic traits tend to behave in the same way in the marketplace. And years of research have taken this concept further, confirming that residents in neighbourhoods with similar demographics tend to have similar marketplace preferences regardless of where those neighbourhoods are located. As PRIZM C2 proves, the residents of Nouveaux Riches, a cluster of prosperous suburban Francophone families, share a fondness for bicycling and cross-country skiing, whether they live in St-Bruno, Lac Beauport, Lorraine or Boucherville. These principles are expanded with PRIZM C2, integrating psychographic data with geodemographics to show that the residents of the same cluster tend to share the same value systems as well. Social Values analysis provides much deeper answers about why consumers make the choices that they do. With its Social Values component, PRIZM C2 helps you understand how your target consumers think, to tailor your marketing messages for the greatest impact.

Most marketers are familiar with the concepts of Social Values from reading Michael Adams’ award winning books Sex in the Snow, Fire and Ice and American Backlash. PRIZM C2 enables you to take the Values for Canada that are described in these books at 10,000 feet and apply them to customers and neighbourhoods.

For example, geodemographic analysis tells us that Young Digerati segments consists of tech-savvy singles and couples living in fashionable urban neighbourhoods in a handful of large cities. But by adding Social Values data, marketers learn that the values of Young Digerati are as cutting-edge as their laptops. These young Canadians see themselves as belonging to the global village and show their recognition of the shrinking world in their global ecological consciousness. While they are eager to succeed, they don’t want to climb an outdated corporate hierarchy to do so; and any marketing campaign should highlight their independent spirit, working on their own outside the cubicles of a large corporation.

Through a strategic partnership, PRIZM C2 is also linked to PRIZM NE, the U.S. system developed by Claritas Inc., which is the best-known cluster system in the world. Sixteen segments in both systems share the same name and similar demographic profile – clusters like Money & Brains, Back Country Folks and Big Sky Families. As a result, PRIZM C2 permits clients from Canada and the U.S. to accomplish a variety of business applications – customer profiling and acquisition, cross-selling and site selection, strategic planning and media buying – to reach consumers on both sides of the border. Sixteen are the same – but 50 are different. Understanding those differences can make Canada a more lucrative market for US businesses.

Easy to Access and to Use

We deliver PRIZM C2 analysis as a licensed file to overlay on your database or within PCensus. PRIZM C2 is privacy friendly – it augments your customer database without violating Canada’s strict privacy laws. Let us show you how you can use PRIZM C2 to make your business more profitable.

Gain insight into your customer’s available funds. While Household Income provides information on gross pay, Disposable & Discretionary Income describes income that is able to be spent. Disposable Income measures after-tax income and Discretionary income takes this one step further to identify the money that is left over to save or spend after necessities are also deducted. These necessities include taxes, food, housing, transportation, apparel and out-of-pocket health care.

This dataset is a subset of Environics Analytics’ more comprehensive WealthScapes financial database. Rigorous modeling provides reliable data at all levels of geography. Whether you’re offering a mortgage, selling a Mercedes or asking for a donation, Disposable & Discretionary Income helps you make smarter marketing decisions