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While its insights are undeniable, this clustered view of life is not universally accepted. Charges of oversimplification, stereotyping, and redlining are often leveled, and there are revolts against the "I am what I buy" mentality inherent in a consumer-based construct. There's something unnerving about being measured and pigeonholed on the basis of address or purchase patterns. Do you feel as if you belong to Money & Brains or Mobility Blues? Are you really a hunk of Brie or a country cottage by a lake? How much do you really have in common with others who watch The X-Files or join investment clubs?

Like many systems used to understand and predict consumer behavior, the clusters have raised privacy concerns along with the specter of an evil, all-knowing marketing monster. Many companies that operate data warehouses containing information on consumers use cluster systems, the better to divine the desired Boomtown Singles or Greenbelt Families consumers among lists of magazine readers or political contributors. And the information-gathering business is booming, projected to grow to a $10 billion industry this year. Companies like Metromail and The Polk Company gather and sort information on the lifestyles and spending habits of most of the 100 million individual households in the nation.

Of course, databases filled with personal information have existed since computers were invented, but the current explosion in data collecting - and abuses through inaccurate credit reports and zealous promotions - has understandably alarmed consumers. A 1996 survey by Louis Harris & Associates for Equifax Inc., a giant credit bureau, found that nearly nine out of ten Americans expressed concern about threats to their privacy. In 1997, more than 8,500 privacy bills were introduced in state legislatures. And there's every fear that without strong federal oversight of the data-collection industry, breaches of privacy in the information age will increase. Today, companies rake in information from loan applications, medical histories, driver's licenses, warranty cards, and credit card receipts."In the not too distant future," warns Democratic congressman Bob Wise of West Virginia, "consumers face the prospect that a computer somewhere will compile records about every place they go and everything they purchase."

But fears about Big Brother's power over consumers may be overstated. Cluster firms see themselves as matchmakers for parties with common interests, helping sellers understand and respond to the needs of shoppers. And no database in the U.S. - not even the census - contains complete records for every household or individual. Some industry experts estimate that as much as 30 percent of all database records on an individual or household may be inaccurate because people move, change jobs, divorce, or have children. Others note an important reason that most marketers consider privacy a low-priority issue: money. While a list of addresses in one zip code destined to receive a brochure for a new record shop may be bought for as little as thirty cents per address, it routinely costs ten times as much for information to identify particular households that bought a record in the last month. Clusters make bottom-line sense, allowing companies to simply target homes one block at a time and avoid any nasty questions about invasions of privacy. "We try to bring neighborhoods to life," declares Nancy Deck, president of Claritas. "Everything we've done to date concerns consumer behavior at the neighborhood level. And it works because cluster data gets you most of the way there while avoiding the extra cost of household data and respecting an individual's privacy."

Perhaps the most powerful defense against the abuse of cluster information is the American consumer's healthy independent streak. Marketing remains an art as much as a science, and eight out of ten new products still fail every year because consumers are too fickle to be manipulable. Contrary to the notion that America has become a totally acquisitive society, the cluster system reveals lifestyles that reject that ethic. In Single City Blues, a cluster of young, downscale urban singles, there's an almost nihilistic disdain for consumer electronics like boom boxes, video games, and cell phones that plague people in public places. Hanging over the counter at Anne Hughes's Kitchen Table Café in Southeast Portland, Oregon, is a large drawing of a flip phone with a red slash through it announcing the restaurant to be a "cell-free zone." Hughes, a bespectacled earth mother who frequently hosts neighborhood potluck dinners, refuses to buy a television set, dismissing TV as "air pollution." When a Nielsen pollster once called to ask about her viewing habits, she explained she didn't own a set (making her a member of a group that represents only 1 percent of the population). A few minutes later, the pollster's supervisor called back to make sure his associate hadn't misunderstood. Much of America looks at Single City Blues' disaffection for TV as an aberration. In Southeast Portland, that's life.

Still other critics are less concerned by the cluster systems themselves than what they reflect: an increasingly fragmented society divided by income, race, ethnicity, sexual behavior, and the percentage of fat in our diets. A recent Newsweek poll found that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe the national identity is threatened by the increasing diversity of the populace. Economist Paul A. Jargowsky worries about "a pronounced trend toward increasing economic segregation." In the 1990s, the United States had the least equitable income distribution among all developed nations - including England, with its aristocratic traditions. If present trends toward more fragmented lifestyles continue, this gap between Americans will only widen.

Concerns over a thinning social fabric can't be easily dismissed. In America's past, various institutions crossed cultural divides: public schools, the military draft, and the English language. Today, rising minority populations are threatening all these institutions and, thus, the social fabric. Sometime within the next fifty years, whites will be outnumbered by minorities in the U.S. Already, a white backlash of sorts is taking shape as evidenced by rising enrollments in private schools and an estimated eight million Americans now living in gated communities. More and more, people are turning to the private sector to insulate themselves from the rest of society; the latest retail experiment is the notion of so-called membership malls. Some critics wonder if the nation will splinter like the Soviet Union. As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. worried in his 1992 book The Disuniting of America, "Will the center hold? Or will the melting pot give way to the Tower of Babel?"

There's no clear answer. The clusters merely show that although the nation is far from being one big leafy suburb, Americans today are managing to find happiness within their patches on the national quilt. And as society continues its fragmentation in the future, cluster systems will be essential tools for understanding the changes affecting the U.S. population. One day in the future, we may be sliced and diced 275 million ways, one for every American citizen: You'll have your own personal lifestyle type known by you, your family, and any businessperson or politician with access to a database. But even in that fractured state of affairs, America will manage to endure, united in the recognition of its historic role as a great experiment in diversity. In this clustered world, you are where you live, even if your country is splintered into countless, clamorous lifestyles.

Copyright © 2000 by Michael J. Weiss

Tags: Career & Money

About the Author

Michael J. Weiss is an award-winning journalist, author, and marketing consultant. A contributing editor to the Washingtonian and Ladies' Home Journal, he has also written for the Atlantic Monthly, the Newport Times, Redbook, and People. His first book, The Clustering of America, was named one of the best business books of 1988. He lives with his wife and two children in Washington, D.C.