Claritas Prizm

Claritas Prizm

Nielsen PRIZM is a set of geo-demographic segments for the United States, developed by Claritas Inc., which was then acquired by The Nielsen Company. It was a widely used customer segmentation system for marketing in the United States in the 1990s and continues to be used today.

The segments were developed, in part, via the analysis of U.S. census data. PRIZM NE (New Evolution) is an update to the original PRIZM model that featured 62 segments. The PRIZM system categorizes U.S. consumers into 14 distinct groups and 66 demographically and behaviorally distinct types, or "segments," to help marketers discern those consumers’ likes, dislikes, lifestyles and purchase behaviors. PRIZM provides a seamless transition between household-level coding and geographic-level coding by providing the same segment schema at both levels. It allows a ‘downshift’ from geo-demographic to the household-level.

For instance, the segment The Cosmopolitans is defined as consisting of immigrants and descendants of multi–cultural backgrounds in multi-racial, multi-lingual neighborhoods. PRIZM has a specific set of ZIP Codes where The Cosmopolitans segment are predominant. Similarly, the segment Kids & Cul-de-Sacs is defined as consisting of suburban, upscale, married couples with children, typically within recently built subdivisions.

A large number of data warehouses include a PRIZM code along with a customer identifier, e.g. your bank is likely to have a PRIZM code next to your name in its data warehouse, so it can market suitable additional products to you.