预收账款怎么算:阶层新定义悄然流行

眼下经济不景气，零售商们正借助于人口学新的分类方法来锁定目标消费群，比如“无忧家庭”“忧心忡忡的富人们”、“富裕的中老年阶层”等等。

By Harry Wallop

作者：Harry Wallop

9:48PM BST 07 Aug 2011

2011年8月7日

Shopkeeper after shopkeeper has blamed the "squeezed middle classes" for their woes in recent months. Focus DIY, Habitat, Carpetright, Comet – all have seen their fortunes hit by a swathe of consumers putting their wallets away. 

近几个月来，越来越多的商家在抱怨所谓的“缩水的中产阶级”，像Focus DIY, Habitat, Carpetright, Comet这些著名零售商无一例外都表示消费者们捂紧钱包正让他们遭受沉重打击。

低靡的房地产市场、攀升的汽油和食品价格、就业市场中弥漫的焦虑情绪，以及工资缩水、低福利，种种因素搅和在一起，使得很多家庭慎于消费。

Shopper numbers on the high street fell 2.2pc in July compared with last year, according to Experian, the data company. 

根据数据公司Experian的统计，全英主要街道的店铺数量同比去年7月份下降了2.2个百分点。

Even the mighty Sir Philip Green warned last week that his shops' profits are likely to be a third lower this year. 

就连很强势的Sir Philip Green公司也在上周发出警告称其利润今年将会减少三分之一。

The doom is not universal, of course. Mulberry, Burberry, Louis Vuitton and other luxury goods manufacturers seem impervious, while at the other end of the scale, Poundland, 99p stores and Sports Direct are all in rude health. 

当然，霉运不会降临到所有人的头上。Mulberry, Burberry, Louis Vuitton这些顶级的奢侈品厂商就似乎未受影响。而与其对应的平民消费品商家，比如Poundland，99p stores，和Sports Direct就几乎全都经营困难。

So is it simply a case that shops serving the middle classes are those that have been hit? 

如此看来，难道说，服务于消费群是中产阶层的商家才会遭受重创吗？

No. That's not only too simplistic but the middle classes, never a homogenous group, have become ever more fractured during the recession. 

非也。这不仅仅是划分个中产阶层那么简单，在经济不景气期，并不存在一个单一同质阶层面对衰退而变得脆弱。

"I am always hearing about the middle classes," Harold Macmillan once famously told one of his advisers. "What is it they really want? Can you put it down on a sheet of notepaper, and I will see whether we can give it to them?" 

Harold Macmillan曾经和他的顾问有一个很有名的对话：“我总是听说中产阶层这个概念，那么他们究竟想要什么呢？你能不能把他们的需求列张清单，好让我看看我们究竟能为他们提供些什么。”

He was speaking in the 1950s, a few years before even the basic A,B,C,D,E socio-economic classification came about in an attempt to help newspapers define their readership. A to C1 ran from upper middle class professionals to lower middle class administrative workers, while C2 to E covered skilled manual workers to those who rely on benefits. 

他说这席话的时间五十年代，甚至比提出A,B,C,D,E分类法的时间还早几年。A,B,C,D,E分类法是由社会经济学家提出的分类概念用以帮助报纸来定义其读者群。A 到 C1是以专业人士为代表的高级中产阶层到以行政管理人员为代表的低阶中产阶层，C2 到E则包括了从熟练的手工作业工人到靠福利过活的人们。

In recent years, however, this attempt to group people and define their social status has become far more sophisticated and it is retailers who are at the forefront of using the demographic tools in a bid to predict who will survive on the high street and who will go the way of Woolworths, Focus and Habitat. 

近几年来，将人群进行分类并定义其社会地位的研究正变得越来越精细。而商业零售商们正是利用这种人口统计学工具来锁定目标客户群的先锋。他们通过这种工具来预测谁能够在主要商业街道上存活下来，而谁又将步Woolworths, Focus and Habitat的后尘。

CACI, a market research firm, runs a database called Acorn, used by John Lewis and many other leading retailers. It splits the population not into 56 separate classifications. From "wealthy mature professionals, large houses" and "villages with wealthy commuters" to "multi-ethnic crowded flats" and "old people, many high-rise flats", categories are based on postcodes. 

CACI是一家市场调研公司，它创建了一个数据库叫做Acorn，目前正被John Lewis这类零售商领袖应用。Acorn将人群分成56个独立的组别，从“富裕、成熟的专业人士、拥有豪宅”、“有富人社区的村庄”到“多种族聚居的公寓”、“老人，多栋高层楼群公寓”，按英国邮政编码进行分类。

The company estimates it has almost every person in the country on its database, a boast that can be shared by many other data companies notably its main rival Experian, which has a similar database called Mosaic. And the postcode – when tallied with other key documents such as the census, insurance documents and consumer surveys – can tell you an astonishing amount from whether you have pet insurance, the size of your monthly mortgage payments to how much wine you buy over the internet and whether you prefer Aldi or Asda. 

CACI评价它的数据库能囊括这个国家里的每一个人，还夸口说他们的数据被很多信息公司分享，有的还是CACI的竞争对手，特别著名的是Experian（益佰利公司），该公司有个类似的数据库叫Mosaic。关于邮政编码——它同时与其它重要数据文件保持一致，比如人口普查数据、保险信息及消费者调查数据结果——能够告诉你惊人量的数据信息：从你是否给宠物上了保险、你每月的还贷金额是多少到你网购了多少葡萄酒，更有甚者你究竟更偏好从Aldi购物还是从Asda购物。

Paul Langston, managing partner at CACI, said: "It's not just about income and spend, it's also about what brands people prefer, what they don't prefer, what magazine they will read." 

CACI的合伙人Paul Langston说：“这个数据库不仅仅涉及人们的收入和消费，它还关注人们的喜好，告诉你人们喜欢什么品牌，不喜欢什么品牌，愿意读哪种类型的杂志。”

Retailers, for a fee, can access these databases and use them to tailor their marketing, decide where to start a new store and also, increasingly, decide what products they should stock. 

商家付费便可接入数据库共享数据，并利用数据分析结果来指导市场营销，比如决定在哪里新开一家铺面、越来越多的靠这些数据来决定库存商品的种类。

Dixons Retail, buffeted by the dire state of the consumer electronics industry, has arguably fared far better than most of its rivals. One of its key successes over the last year has been a definite shift upmarket, after it analysed its shopping data. It realised it was "fighting for the middle market" in an attempt to persuade hard-pressed shoppers to part with their cash, selling too many Amstrad products and £300 laptops and missing out on the "design driven" customers, many of whom had kept their jobs and were on tracker-rate mortgages so had benefited from the financial crisis. 

Dixons Retail（一家电子零售商）在严酷的电子消费品市场中奋力杀出一条路，曾饱受其同行诟议。不过其主要的成功经验恰恰源于在分析了数据之后将目标客户升级至高端市场。他们意识到在中级市场中的挣扎实际上就是销售了太多的像Amstrad这样的中档商品以及价值仅300磅左右的笔记本电脑而使得零售店铺现金流匮乏，这样做导致店铺错失了“设计导向”型的高端客户群，这些人工作稳定甚至他们的抵押贷款也因为金融危机减少了利息支出而获益呢。

Niall O'Keefe, UK marketing director at Dixons Retail, said: "We used it to build our ranges. If you don't analyse your customer base you end up filling your store with your best guess at what customers want." 

Dixons Retail的全英市场总监Niall O'Keefe说：“我们利用数据分析来界定我们的目标客户。如果你不分析你的客户，你就只能瞎猜你的客户的真实需求，而这根本就只能让你毫无头绪而无法备货。”

Hence, it now sells more upmarket brands such as Bose, Miele, Panasonic and Sennheiser, all of which have fared surprisingly well in recent months. 

因此，我们现在卖更多的高端品牌，如博士、美诺、松下及施耐德，而这些产品无一例外地在最近的几个月里卖得相当的好。

CACI has in fact worked out which retailers are most likely to struggle and which ones are most likely to thrive, based on the social class of their customers. 

其实CACI通过数据分析已经能预测出哪家商家还得继续挣扎，哪家商家能活得很好，实际上都是基于其客户阶层进行的分析。

Suits You, Argos, Dreams, Bhs, Matalan, ScS and Bonmarche are all looking in poor shape, according to the Acorn analysis. "These are the brands whose customers are being squeezed the most," said Mr Langston. They have a disproportionate number of customers from the "secure families", "settled suburbia" and "post industrial families" categories – essentially the "squeezed middle". 

根据Acorn数据分析，Suits You, Argos, Dreams, Bhs, Matalan, ScS 和 Bonmarche这些品牌看上去都不咋乐观，“这些品牌的客户群正是被影响最厉害的那些人” Langston先生如是说。这些品牌的消费者里有不成比例的人来自于“有保障的家庭”“稳定的郊区居住家庭”及“后工业化家庭”组别——这正是构成“挣扎的中产阶层”的主要部分。

Monsoon, Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Karen Millen, House of Fraser and Jigsaw, the former employer of the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, may sound like quintessentially middle class brands, but they, in fact, have a greater proportion of customers from the "worried wealthy", "affluent greys" and "flourishing families" and are likely to emerge from the high street slowdown in good shape. 

Monsoon, Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Karen Millen, House of Fraser 以及 Jigsaw,听上去似乎是确定无疑的中产阶级消费品牌，然而。事实上，他们的消费群体有很大一部分来自“忧心忡忡的富人”“富裕的中老年人”及“繁荣发展的家庭”，因此它们很可能会慢慢从主要商业街上出现并经营良好。

Of course, this analysis of Britain on an almost house-by-house basis can go too far. As Lord Wolfson, the chief executive of Next, who posted pretty decent sales figures last week, said: "The truth is, you can spend an awful lot of time looking at these things, when the reality is when it comes to people buying something, 'do I like this dress' is far more important."

显然，这些基于一家一户的对全英消费者的分析不会涵盖全部细节。上周，NEXT公司的执行总裁Lord Wolfson在公布了一系列漂亮的销售数据后说：“事实是，尽管你可以花上大把的时间去研究这些事儿，可是当人们走进商店来买东西时，自问‘我喜欢不喜欢这件衣裳’才是更重要的。