imomus | Kartoffelgrafiken: market segmentation potato graphics

Kartoffelgrafiken: market segmentation potato graphics

I'm writing this with Strawberry Jam by Animal Collective playing softly in the background (it's 3.30am). Now, why am I not writing it with, say, Neon Bible by Arcade Fire playing? Why did I make that choice of jam over bible? According to German consumer research firm Sinus Sociovision, the answer has something to do with potatoes. They've plotted attitudes, tastes and worldviews on a series of national diagrams (they call them Kartoffelgrafiken -- potato graphics) depicting "milieus". This first one is the sort of master diagram, a meta-milieu of meta-potatoes which basically shows how the others are laid out:

My friend Jan Lindenberg, knowing how much I like pretentious, precise, picturesque market segmentation tools from Mosaic to the Inglehart Values Map, sent me a link to these Sinus potatoes, telling me that I might be able to relate them to my entry about the Berlin Japanese in their bubble.

So I read a machine-translated blurb from the German marketers which told me that Mr Ortmann and Mr Urban, both in their mid-40s, both married with children, earning the same and living in the same kind of upscale house, might still be in totally different sacks of potatoes in terms of their consumption, their tastes; Mr Ortmann takes Ortmann Junior into the woods behind the stadium then to McDonalds, whereas Mr Urban leaves his son alone, preferring to spend his leisure time reading fiction, listening to jazz and sipping espresso. And if men can be so different, countries can too. Enter the international potato maps.

I began to click through the various countries Sinus has covered. The maps are based on the attitudes that emerged during thousands of phone interviews with people in the various countries. They haven't done Sweden or Japan yet (so Sweden can't "win" this one), but above you see how Sinus thinks the potatoes -- sorry, the attitude clusters -- shake down in Britain. The y-axis plots social status, the x-axis is an Inglehart-like continuum from traditional / conservative values (sense of duty and order), through modern consumer hedonism to something rather mysteriously called "patchwork / virtual society" at the end. (More information on the categories is here.)

On the British map, I feel like I'd be happy amongst the Ground-breakers, the Pleasure-seekers, the Modern Performers or the Post-Materialists, though probably not in "quiet, peaceful Britain" nor amongst the Traditionalists or Establisheds. Britain looks pretty progressive on this map, though; put all the percentage figures together and the people I could make common cause with represent 40% of the entire society. The others -- the Tories -- make up 60%, which is more, but not that much more. A rush and a push...

The American map adds an extra category on the status scale, "marginal". The USA seems to have a more extreme span from winners (called "Sovereigns" here, but presumably super-capitalist captains of industry) to losers (an 11%-sized potato marked "Disenfranchised", though they could as well have titled it "Sub-Prime"). Here the general area I felt comfortable with in the British map is occupied by a big potato marked "Mavericks" -- a word I have problems with, since the libertarianism it represents can be an anarchy of the right as well as of the left; nutty survivalists, vigilantes and religious cranks might well be blighting this potato like so many Colorado beetles.

The scary thing about the US map is that only 10% of the population seem to be "my kind of person" (Liberal Progressives; and they probably all live in New York). The rest are stuff like Old Guard, Materialists, Middle America, and "Adaptive Achievers". Okay, let's see what Sinus make of Germany, my adopted homeland.

The German map looks pretty much like the British one; there's a goodly clump of experimentalists, postmaterialists, modern performers, hedonists, any of whom I could share a cup of hot spiced gluhwein with. Here, though, there's one peculiarity -- the right wing types are joined by a group called DDR Nostalgists, left wing conservatives who want communism back. They'd probably approve of the Marx and Engels posters on my kitchen wall, anyway. Nice to know I have friends even on the trad side here. If I add their 5% to the friendly potatoes I get a total of 44% of the German population whose values I might vaguely share, which might explain why I'm here rather than in Britain (though it's not a huge difference). Sorry this is all about me, by the way, but you can have fun finding your own tasty potatoes.

Everything sounds cooler in Spanish -- Spain has a potato for Postmodernists, for heaven's sake, and for Vanguardistas! Then there are the Che Guevara-sounding Rebeldes Reactivos and the Progresistas Acomodados. When I add up all the Spanish progressives, though, I get only 39%. There are a lot of Tradicionales and Burguesia out there. Italy looks even more conservative; there's a bit of a gap where the experimental and postmaterialist types should be, and, outside of 17% Progressisti Tolleranti and Edonisti Ribelli, just a lot of Consumisti, Borghesia, Ambitiosi social climber types, and a huge clump of Tradizionali Conservatori. That potato alone is bigger than the Progressives and Hedonists put together. I'd probably be happier in Italy than Poland, though; according to Sinus it lacks any sort of postmaterial or postmodern class. The areas usually occupied by experimental types are, in Poland, taken up with "Popular Fun and Money Driven" (a big 18% potato), High Living Players and Status-and-Career-Oriented types.

China also doesn't offer much to experimentalists -- here groups of Affluent Contendeds, Golden Hedonists and Hedo-Materialists occupy the area where, in post-industrial countries, you'd find the windmill, art lab and solar panel fans. What's more, the Educated Specialists (the Intelligentsia and Civil Service, presumably) are way over to the Slow, Trad side of the diagram. Everyone else in China just seems to be mintin' it and lovin' the bling.

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Well, I imagine in China that's pretty much all the social dialogue that's allowed. It's hard to conceive a post-consumer society when the state and industry are still hell-bent on consumerizing everyone.

There are plenty of peasants left in China, after all, and all of the other (more or less fully industrialized) countries listed have more or less saturated themselves with consumer culture. The new social forms that remain in the industrial world, then, are post-consumer bobos and the yet-materialistic dispossessed.

I dreamed that you were Laurie Anderson. With an eye-patch! That's crazy imomus!
\
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SirOxIeuNDE

mach 20

are you better than laurie? I think not. japan be damned. Ypou have been sent for ma purpose Nick!

rooster cogburn had an eyepatch!

I love momus! hawt!

fuck the internet

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/06/christopher_plu.html

you lve drinkl but hate smokl - huh?

but i lobve you YES!!!!

EXCELLENT! Dramatized Nabokov lectures on Kafka (http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/06/christopher_plu.html)!

I see Nabokov does a bit of market segment identification in there:

"Gregor Samsa, son of middle-class parents in Prague -- Flaubertian philistines, people only interested in the material side of life, vulgarian in their taste..."

I feel like there's too little distinction between cultural and economic measures in the names of these potatoes. It's true that the people most concerned with their personal welfare ("the disenfranchised") have their culture defined by it, but people of different nationalities appear to interpret what must be such broad questions in widely varying ways. That surely says something, but it's hard to guess the underlying reasons. What are the usual intentions of their native pollsters?
It's a relevant and seductive framework, but I don't know good it is for choosing your potatoes.

More of a yam man.

I was hoping for candied, actually.

Love that The-Day-Today-esque graph Kumakouji, never underestimate the hidden power of that feline-fetishist, sub-semioticist demographic.
It's not the size of the pot, it's the texture of the tuber that counts!
Thomas S.

" Mr Ortmann and Mr Urban, both in their mid-40s, both married with children, earning the same and living in the same kind of upscale house, might still be in totally different sacks of potatoes in terms of their consumption, their tastes; Mr Ortmann takes Ortmann Junior into the woods behind the stadium then to McDonalds, whereas Mr Urban leaves his son alone, preferring to spend his leisure time reading fiction, listening to jazz and sipping espresso. And if men can be so different, countries can too."

You do realise how ridiculous it is to point out that two people with exactly the same incomes can be totally different right before using charts to generalise millions of people when only a few thousand (literally) were surveyed?

I've seen a lot of sociological charts but these are by far the most obscure and insubstantial.

Britain has been put into 3 classes: upper, middle, and lower. How do they define people into groups when even the British can't really decide what constitutes upper, middle and lower anymore (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6295743.stm)? Is it all about money now? Or education? The y-axis is useless until they elaborate on this, which I really doubt they could.

The basic values y-axis is bizarre too. The traditionalists side makes sense, then you have the vague "consumer hedonism & Post-materialism" values catagory all in the same block when they're seemingly contrary to one another. I have no idea what the patchwork/virtual society value means.

Then onto the sinuses themselves -- If I'm working class and my values fall into catagory B I'm a "precarious, pleasure seeker", but if I'm upper class catagory B I'm a "post-materialist ground breaker" -- how do these two people share the same values? You could make this shit up and nobody would know any different.

Also, stop kidding yourself you'd feel most comfortable around the "post-materialists" -- you own too many expensive apple products, are too preoccupied with fashion, take too many carbon-busting plane flights to design events and spend way too much of your time in capital cities that by their very nature have consumerism as their foundations.

Your yams / cats map was fun, Kuma.

then you have the vague "consumer hedonism & Post-materialism" values catagory all in the same block when they're seemingly contrary to one another.

Remember that this measures attitudes, which often compensate for our actual circumstances and even contradict them somewhat. Isn't it possible that consumerism involves a kind of anorexia-bulimia dialectic, or even "hypocrisy", or contradictions, if you prefer that language? Haven't you noticed how ethical consumption (fair trade, bio and eco) has become a fast-growing consumption trend? The biggest new supermarket to open in my neighbourhood is an eco-themed organic one. More and more consumption is being styled as post-consumption and targeted at affluent attitudinal post-materialists who nevertheless still have actual material needs.

The other paradox this chart pins well is the fact that the people with materialistic attitudes are generally low in the income/status bracket. It's precisely the people who can't afford bling who are most into bling as a concept / lifestyle / set of signifiers.

As for Precarious Pleasure-Seekers being next to Post-Materialist Ground-Breakers, what unites these people is a concern for non-material values. Imagine poor bohemians without credit cards living (precariously but hedonistically) with their Guardian-reading, affluent but idealistic parents. Or a modern-day post-materialist Lady Chatterley having an affair with her (avant) gardener. And using yams galore!

I'm post-materialist in the paradoxical way (and the C category is meta-labeled "re-orientation, multiple options, experimentation, paradoxes" on the meta-map) that all post-materialists are. But note that when I get to my destination in my jet I don't head out shopping. I have no money, after all, and don't want any. I tend to look at art, none of which I ever buy.

Here are three of the pen sketches they provide, translated from German:

Intellectual
World-openness and postmaterial values; wide cultural and intellectual interests; striving for self-actualisation and personal development.

Sensation Oriented
Search for fun and action, after new experiences and intense sensations, live in the here and now. Individualism and spontaneity; provocative and unconventional style.

Modern Performing
Young, flexible and socially mobile, intensive living in sin, after success and fun; high qualification and ready to perform; multimedia-fascination.

Of those groups, Intellectual is probably the one that fits me best, since I'm always tapping away at this bloody blog!

So what you're trying to say is that Britain's basic values 'B' block contains contrary values that are by and large two sides of the same coin. The lower classes have no wealth and are attracted to the gaudy, avaricious aspects of consumerism where as the higher classes are attracted to what they see as the ethical, almost "anti-consumerist" side of materialism. It's "post-materialist" in that it's materialism that's trying to move away from the avaricious aspects of consumerism associated with the lower classes.

That makes perfect sense, you're right. However, I think the label "post-materialist" is misleading. I think "Conscientious consumerist" is a more accurate term. I also think attributing it to the upper classes is missing the mark because it's the middle classes that are championing this type of consumerism.

Last night I watched a TV program called "Jamie's Fowl Dinners". Channel 4 has been putting on a season of programmes called "Food Fight Season" which takes an indepth look at the foods Britain consumes. The usual suspects are there encouraging the nation to buy organic, seasonal, un-processed ingredients.

"Jamie's Fowl Dinners" was basically a show about the poultry industry, how factory farming is inhumane and how people should be buying free-range chickens and eggs. Infact, even the British government has now said it's going to ban battery farming (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7180018.stm) by 2012. There is most definitely a slightly eccentric, ecofriendly, ~~post-materialist~~ conscientious consumerist aspect to Britains middle classes.

that said, 2000 doesnt = 64 million, and I fit absolutely nowhere on that potato chart of Britain.

Jamie looks like an ethical post-materialist, but not an experimental sort. I certainly hope he isn't going to experiment with that chicken, anyway.

Yes, he is doing a pretty fine impersonation of the bassist from REM there. Under those vestments he wears a sharp business suit and makes a lucrative buck flogging over-illustrated cookbooks to middle-class mums who can't cook.
Thomas S.

(deleted comment)

You mean the horrible Brian Wilson impression they've been doing for the past seven years?

The lower classes have no wealth and are attracted to the gaudy, avaricious aspects of consumerism

You know, the notion of the working class being captivated by the supposed audacity of being able to buy things explains a remarkable lot about gangsta.

Du liest kein Deutsch? Natuerlich ein Bisschen, no? I've always wondered, as obviously it is totally possible to speak English in so much of Berlin. (Just picking up on the fact that you read this translated.)

I do read German after a fashion, but I was sort of making fun of the machine translation, which rendered the marketing pen sketches somewhat sinister.

liest du - in a question the verb goes first

That's not necessarily correct. German is a pretty flexible language. "Du liest kein Deutsch?" is perfectly right, similar to the English language, where it's possible to ask "Don't you read any German?" and "You don't read any German?". What's a slight mistake is that "bisschen" is actually not 'substantiviert' in this sentence and should therefore not be written with a capital b.

Makes sense, I'm still learning German. Is the connotation the same in English? If I ever used the phrasing "Don't you ...?", I'd probably get huffed at... it's a little rude and presumptuous. If that's the case then maybe that's why I've never heard it in German? Of course I've never heard "wie gehts, alter?? lool!" either.

It doesn't make much of a difference if you ask "Liest du kein Deutsch?" or "Du liest kein Deutsch?".
The former sounds a tad more "vorwurfsvoll" (ie. "you really should, ya know"), though (very slightly, of course, and depending a lot on context and accentuation), the latter has a pinch more surprise in it.

-r (the same anon from the post you replied to)

ja danke. aber immer? ohne ausnahme? in english, you would use this same construction to express surprise at something, rather than to ask a real question. I.e.: "You don't read German?!?!" Perhaps one can't do that in German , but I was under the impression that you could.

It definitely exists, but it's pretty rude to use it ... I haven't heard it or used it since I was a kid.

Have you visited the DDR museum?

I was surprised to find long lines outside and the rather small place totally crowded inside - a majority of the people Germans, as far as I could tell. The Stasi exhibition, at another location, was almost empty. No entree fee (and free posters) but hardly anyone there.

The store at Hachemarkt selling Ampelman souvenirs was crowded ar well.

Somebody is getting very rich of this craving for the past.

I haven't seen the DDR Museum, no. But whole parts of the city seem to be a DDR Museum. Especially the flohmarkts.

This entry makes me want to take those personality tests that tell you your results through a graph. Like this one (http://www.okcupid.com/tests/17565214125862764376/3-Variable-Funny) that quizzes me on my humor spectrum:

Thank you Momus, for inspiring me to take personality tests through this entry! When I wake up tomorrow, I'm expecting your results in my inbox!

My score on The 3 Variable Funny Test (http://www.okcupid.com/tests/17565214125862764376/3-Variable-Funny):

the Provacateur

((57% dark, 34% spontaneous, 42% vulgar))

your humor style:VULGAR | COMPLEX | DARK

You'll crack on anything, and you're often witty, even caustic, about it.Therefore, your sense of humor is polarizing. You're transgressive, and you've got a seriously sharp 'edge'--maybe too much for some folks. If they get you, people think you're one of the funniest (and smartest) people in the world. If they don't, they think you're an ass. Whatever, right? While some might question your judgement, your comic intellect is unquestionably respected.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Chris Rock - Lenny Bruce - George Carlin

The 3-Variable Funny Test!
- it rules -

If you're interested, try my best friend's best test:
The Genghis Khan Genetic Fitness Masterpiece

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test (http://www.okcupid.com/tests/17565214125862764376/3-Variable-Funny)

View My Profile: (http://www.okcupid.com/profile?u=)

(OkCupid Free Online Dating (http://www.okcupid.com))

Provacateur? Is that a cross between a provocateur and a vacuum cleaner? A kind of Zen troll whose smut-removing jokes empty the room?

EXCUSE ME FANCYPANTS, I WAS EXPECTING YOUR RESULTS WHEN I WOKE UP

I AM AWAKE OBVIOUSLY, SO WHERE ARE THEY? >:O

Sounds about right for you!

This test tracked 3 variables. How the score compared to the other people's:

Well, I guess the fact that you wrote this at 3.30 am explains a lot.

Mr. Potato Head ... a world-class personality whose recognition grew from a simple children\'s toy to everyone\'s best friend, a speaker of causes, entertainment star and a cultural icon.

um............WHERE'S JAPAN'S MAP OF POTATOES?

re: america - i agree that NYC has a lot of "your kind of people" (i grew up there), but so does LA/San Francisco/much of CA - i think actually looking at the whole state CA probably has more of us than NY

Dig a little deeper and a lot of those 'progressives' are big time libertarians ... one of the big cores of the libertarian ethos is CA, particularly the Bay Area.

Hmm, I recall phone interviewing being one of the least reliable types of market researching (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_research) methods. Though that is what a book said.

Wow, sorry about that Nick. I am not much of a drinker and I was blotto when I posted. I apologize.
What I was trying to say was that it would be interesting to make a film about Laurie Anderson and have you play her. Or you be one of the people who play her like that new Dylan bio-pic. I could see you with a lightbulb in your mouth and wearing ice skates.

The Rooster Cogburn ref came from here - http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/billythekid/trailer/

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Kartoffelgrafiken: market segmentation potato graphics

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momus

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Spud demographics

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Puckah fuckah

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RE: DDR Nostalgists

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