Virtual Geodemographics: Consumer Insight in Online and Offline Spaces

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Author(s): Alex D. Singleton (University of Liverpool, UK)
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 11
Source title: Handbook of Research on Methods and Techniques for Studying Virtual Communities: Paradigms and Phenomena
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Ben Kei Daniel (University of Saskatchewan, Canada)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-040-2.ch022

Keywords: Information Science Reference / Media & Communications / Social Computing / Virtual Communities & Virtual Reality

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Abstract

Computer mediated communication and the Internet has fundamentally changed how consumers and producers connect and interact across both real space, and has also opened up new opportunities in virtual spaces. This book chapter describes how technologies capable of locating and sorting networked communities of geographically disparate individuals within virtual communities present a sea change in the conception, representation and analysis of socioeconomic distributions through geodemographic analysis. It is argued that through virtual communities, social networks between individuals may subsume the role of neighborhood areas as the most appropriate unit of analysis, and as such, geodemographics needs to be repositioned in order to accommodate social similarities in virtual, as well as geographical, space. The chapter ends by proposing a new model for geodemographics which spans both real and virtual geographies.

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Virtual Geodemographics: Consumer Insight in Online and Offline Spaces

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