Identifying audience segments applying the “social space” approach

Lifestyle characteristics have been researched in the social sciences and other areas for more than 40 years now. Among the most prominent approaches belong AIO (Activities, Interests, and Opinions) and VALS (Values and Lifestyles). Based on a large number of questions, often more than 100, towards leisure activities, preferences and attitudes, either cluster analysis methods are used to derive distinct lifestyle segments or factor analysis methods are used to obtain latent axes that can be interpreted as lifestyle dimensions.A theory-rich alternative is Bourdieu's “social space” approach, which is also based on lifestyle characteristics. Bourdieu and his scholars usually applied multiple correspondence analysis for creating a so-called “social space”. In this space, variables are visualized in a map, which can be read like a geographic map: similarities between indicators are reflected by short distances and dissimilarities by large distances. Since there are few constraints on the data only, this method is especially applicable to categorical data. Based on a survey sample (n = 872), we will use this approach to map the connections between lifestyle characteristics, preferred celebrities, preferred movies, socio-demographic characteristics and consumer goods. We will demonstrate that our approach can generate a very detailed audience segmentation, including expressive modes of television product consumption.