Social Class versus Income Revisited: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

In the early 1970s several studies refuted the superiority of social class to income as a basis for segmenting the markets for a wide variety of durable and nondurable goods. This study also examines the relative effectiveness of social class and income, as well as their combination, over a wide range of consumption areas. The author uses frequency of usage criteria for nondurables and quality or feature-level indices for durables. MANOVA, ANOVA, and loglinear modeling results show social class to be superior to income in segmenting food and non-soft drink/non-alcoholic beverage markets, as well as shopping behavior and evening television viewing. Income is superior to social class for major appliances, soft drinks, mixers, and alcoholic beverages. The combination of income and social class is superior for makeup and clothing, as well as automobile and television ownership, and thus a modified form of the relative income and status incongruence hypotheses is supported.