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Profiling City Life

By Paul Hudson

One of the most exciting applications of our Urban Behaviours methodology is to further understand the receptivity of media / marketing messages across the typologies – their contrasting lifestyles demonstrating that because of the way they differ in how they spend their time across different activities and environments they behave very differently. Their behaviour and the link to how it is affected by where they are, who they are with and what they are doing can be mapped across different days of the week and across the different ‘spaces’ that they occupy, painting a picture of their lifestyle in the truest sense.

But when you contrast the lifestyles across eight cities we see that when we begin to consider the implications that behaviour and environment has on marketing, we also see that there are big differences in how we should approach each city.

Every city consists of a dynamic and fluid population, whose differing (and perhaps even at times contrasting) behaviours and lifestyles become embedded in the very fabric of that city. These city dwellers – through their motivations and drive – are, therefore, the defining factors of that city… they make the city what it is.

Urban Behaviours shows that there are large differences in the profile of City Life across each City. London, for example, whilst exhibiting some similarities to Leeds and Manchester is also quite individual and unique in it’s own right. By the same measure, Leeds and Manchester are similar in many ways. Liverpool is yet another case in point, and differs quite dramatically from all of the other Cities.

Through mapping the lifestyles of different groups of people across eight UK cities, we are able to explain such differences.

Drawing on the typologies of Urban Behaviours, we can see that 39% of those living in London are more driven and motivated by work – and therefore spend more time in this ‘mode’ than in any other. This is 9% higher than the average of the eight cities - 12% and 20% higher than Manchester and Leeds respectively for this group.

However, the similarity between these three otherwise contrasting cities lies in the fact that London, Manchester and Leeds are all likely to house a relatively high proportion of those who are motivated by social space, and who therefore exhibit socially-driven characteristics and behaviours in their lifestyles. Indeed, 23% of the sample within London fall into this typology. In addition, this group are most likely to be found in Leeds and Manchester, accounting for a 33% and 30% respectively.
Whilst London is mostly characterised by ‘work-driven’ lifestyles, Leeds and Manchester are more likely to be characterised by those motivated by social ‘spaces’ and the populations therefore more likely to be found spending much more time pursuing social activities outside of the home.

Meanwhile, those living in Liverpool are much more likely to be spend equally balanced proportions of their time between social and home-based activities. Their lifestyles demonstrate more balanced characteristics between either work and home or work and social activities (39% of Liverpool’s population follow this type of lifestyle). In fact 19% of its population, 9% above average, spends equal amounts of time between work, home and social activities combined.

These statistics reflect the defining lifestyles of those living in the cities, painting different profiles of behaviour in each one. For example, the influence and use of media differs significantly between the typologies and is therefore more likely to differ between the cities. The lifestyles explained by those more likely to be found in Leeds and Manchester, for example, are most likely to place a much greater emphasis on their mobile phone to ‘construct’ their social lifestyle. Whilst the more ‘balanced’ lifestyle which is most likely to be found in Liverpool are more likely to spend a much greater proportion of their time travelling between the different ‘spaces’ that occupy their lifestyle. In fact when you consider the differences in behaviour and consumption across entertainment, TV, radio and media devices the lifestyles more likely to be found in each city vary greatly.

In this way, we are further exploring these typologies to further examine each group’s receptiveness to marketing communications across different days and within different contexts. Marketers in London, may for example, wish to concentrate their marketing efforts more towards billboard advertising to target the high proportion of those who, through spending a relatively high proportion of their time in ‘commute mode’, may be more influenced by this channels. Meanwhile, the differences in radio listening and mobile phone use may lead to different approaches within Leeds and Manchester. Finally, in Liverpool it may be far more effective to rely on a mixture TV and billboard as well as more ‘locally’ based radio stations.

As our Urban Behaviours method is used for such applications, we will increasingly deepen our understanding of the lifestyles and behaviours of each group of urban dwellers and each city.

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