Audience Classifications

The NRS social grades are a system of demographic classification used in the United Kingdom. They were originally developed by the National Readership Survey in order to classify readers, but are now used by many other organisations for wider applications and have become a standard for market research. Their definition is now maintained by the Market Research Society.

The grades

The classifications are based on the occupation of the head of the household.

Grade	Social class	Chief income earner's occupation
A	upper middle class	Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B	middle class	Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1	lower middle class	Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2	skilled working class	Skilled manual workers
D	working class	Semi and unskilled manual workers
E	Those at the lowest levels of subsistence	Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the welfare state for their income

The grades are often grouped into ABC1 and C2DE and these are taken to equate to middle class and working class respectively. Only around 2% of the UK population identifies as upper class, and this group is not included in the classification scheme.

Youth tribe - http://www.uktribes.com/

ACORN (acronym for A Classification Of Residential Neighbourhoods) is a geo-demographic information system categorising all United Kingdom post codes into various types based upon census data and other information such as lifestyle surveys. It was developed by Richard Webber of CACI Limited, who also developed the competing MOSAIC system, and is sold to businesses, health and local authorities typically for marketing and planning purposes.