What is social class? Measures of Social Class with Examples
Consumer sociology and marketing. How people are ranked into social classes in a continuum.
How is social class measured. The ranking into lower upper middle class.
Subjective vs objective measures of social class.
Social class is the division of members of society into a hierarchy of distinct status classes. There is a ranking and a differentiation. Families and individuals are ranked into classes.
In behavioural sciences, status is thought of as relative ranking of members of each social class in terms of specific status factors such as wealth, power and prestige.
What is power. Power has to do with the degree of personal influence that one has over others. Wealth relates to economic resources one has.
Prestige is external and refers to the degree of recognition by others.
There are subjective, reputation and objective measures.
Police sometimes use subjective measures of social class to determine if one is in the wrong place, and even go on to arrest people for loitering an intent to commit a felony.
some of the commonly used measures include demographic measures, reputation measures, social measures, and economic measures.
Marketers prefer to use objective measures such as occupation, income and education.
Marketers also add geo-demographic data in the form of residence and neighbourhood, relying on how real estate is ordered in economic segments.
Social class is also used in market segmentation.
Dr Catherine Ngahu
Elevatus!
00:00 Social class ranking and differentiation
00:52 Power, Wealth and Prestige in status ranking
01:43 Subjective vs objective measures of social class
03:40 Police tendency to use subjective social judgement
04:55 Reputation measures of social class
05:51 Objective measures of social class
06:25 Why occupation is a preferred measure of social class
06:54 Geo-demographic data use in social class