A new measure of social classes

CITATION

Rossiter, J.R. (2012) A new measure of social classes, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 11(2), pp.89-93

ABSTRACT
Social classes’ ‘way we live’ values remain amajor influence on consumers’ retail store choices, their brand choices formajor durables, and their
use of health services and pharmaceutical products. Social class, however, has been neglected in modern theories and research in consumer behavior,
probably because of the difficulty of implementing a proper sociological measure of social class distinctions coupled with the realization
that convenient sociodemographic measures of social class are not a valid substitute for the sociological measure. A new 34-item values-based
measure of social class is presented in this article, called the Social Class Values Index (SCVI). The SCVI efficiently distinguishes the six
traditional social-class strata that are based on attributed social prestige and contributes to the first known measure of the non–prestige-based,
largely self-actualized ‘X’ class. The SCVI is interviewer-administered and is easily profile-scored from simple binary answers.


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