SINUS-Milieus

SINUS-Milieus

The SINUS-Milieus are a typology of social categories and marketing target groups based upon the social milieu concept (cf. Social environment) and developed by SINUS Market and Social Research. The SINUS-Milieu model identifies categories of people who share lifestyles, living environments, and mindsets (cf. Lifeworld):. It encompasses two dimensions: value orientation (“tradition,” “modernization/individuation,” and “reorientation”) and social position. The former takes into account basic values as well as attitudes toward particular aspects of life (work, family, freedom, consumption, media, etc.). Sociodemographic variables serve to fill out milieu descriptions.

Table of Contents:

Theoretical background

In social science, a milieu is understood as a category of persons with similar values and lifestyles, which is generally characterized by a high degree of internal communication and perceptible differentiation from other categories. The social milieu concept is influenced by theories of taste and lifestyle developed in continental European academic sociology. It responds to the observation that individuals who share socioeconomic conditions often think and feel differently about the world and lead very different kinds of lives. From the perspective of everyday experience, dissimilar mindsets and lifestyles are often more significant than underlying socioeconomic conditions themselves. Social affiliation must therefore be defined on the basis of shared orientations toward the world and practices of everyday life – i.e., on the basis of lifeworlds or milieus.

The milieu concept neither replaces nor negates the concepts of social status and social class. In contemporary societies, we seldom find a radical decoupling of subjective experience (milieu) from objective structure (status or class). Instead, we usually find consistent correlations between the two: in most societies, there are identifiable upper-, middle-, and lower-status milieus. Milieu and status or class thus serve as complementary factors in the holistic analysis of social life.

Methodology

The SINUS-Milieu model is an application of the milieu concept based upon an interdisciplinary mixed-methods research process. Its object is lifeworld – that is, the totality of an individual’s subjective reality. We cannot postulate lifeworlds in the abstract, nor measure them via objective indicators. Rather, we must seek to grasp them empirically through exploration of everyday attitudes and behaviors. The first step in assembling a milieu model for a given society is qualitative research, namely ethnographic interviews covering its major sociodemographic segments. Interviews with representative individuals are conducted in their native language and typically last around an hour, covering all aspects of everyday life (when possible accompanied by multimedia documentation of living environments). Numerous such interviews allow the identification of transversal lifestyle categories and the development of a hypothetical milieu model. The next step is the quantitative testing and representative generalization of the model. This requires the development of a standardized questionnaire for the determination of milieu affiliation – the so-called milieu indicator. For each milieu group, a specific ideal distribution of response probabilities across all indicator questions is determined (i.e. standard profiles). Individual respondents’ milieu affiliations are determined through statistical cluster analysis, which maps their response patterns against the standard profiles. If the hypothetical milieu model is found to be lacking in precision or reach, additional interviews can be conducted and/or the model and indicator refined. This iterative process can be continued until the model is quantitatively verified to a sufficient extent. Indicators and models can then be adapted to reflect sociocultural and structural transformations.

Application

Since the early 1980s, numerous public- and private-sector organizations have used the SINUS-Milieu model for strategic planning, brand management, product development, and marketing. Disciplines and fields apart from sociology and marketing science in which the model has been used include political science, media studies, environmental studies, gender studies, youth studies, applied musicology, human-computer interaction, transportation planning, and science and technology studies. The term itself is a registered trademark.

Since the 1990s, SINUS-Institut has developed multiple variations on the original milieu model, including:

• Digital Milieus: A model for the milieu positioning of internet users, e.g. for online campaigns.
• Geo-Milieus: A system for tracking and mapping milieus in geographical space, e.g. for urban planning and direct marketing.
• Youth Milieus: A model of the lifeworlds of young people, developed in the SINUS-Institut Youth Studies 2008, 2012, and 2016.
• Migrant Milieus: A model of the lifeworlds of German residents with migrant backgrounds.
• Meta-Milieus: An international milieu model covering around 40 countries in established and emerging markets.

The Meta-Milieu concept is based on the observation that as a given country globalises economically and culturally, its composite segments begin to share more attitudes and behaviours with similar segments in different countries than with one another. SINUS-Institut operationalised this observation through waves of fieldwork in multiple countries, eventually developing similar but distinct Meta-Milieu models for established- and emerging-market countries

Established Markets		Emerging Markets
Meta-Milieu	Traits and keywords	Meta-Milieu	Traits and keywords
Established	Performance & leadership, status-conscious, exclusive tastes, connoisseurship; distinction & self-assertion; conservative morals and social roles	Old Established	Status and leadership; patriarchal & clan-oriented; sense of order & duty; prestige-driven; claim to power balanced by ethics of responsibility
Intellectuals	Open-minded, liberal & pluralistic; searching for self-actualization & personal development; post-material goals; cultural & intellectual interests; authentic; academic; work-life-balance	Established Upper Class	Status-orientation; strategic life planning; work-life-balance; sophisticated indulgences; education & qualification,comparatively liberal; social & ecological responsibility
Performers	Self-determination; meritocracy; flexible & upwardly mobile; looking for an intense life, which means success & fun; good qualifications & willingness to perform; multimedia fascination; "work hard – live exclusive"	Modern Performing	New economic elite; entrepreneurship, performance & efficiency; self-determination; developing globalist orientation; superiority & distinction; willingness to perform
Cosmopolitan Avantgarde	Non-conformist, creative & individualistic; self-realization, freedom & independence, no fixed dogmas; mobile socializers; global, pluralistic, “scene” cosmopolitan, digital natives	Cosmopolitan Avantgarde	Young & wealthy digital globalists; mobile socializers; Western orientation; creative & individualistic; freedom, independence & self-realization
Adaptive Navigators	Loyal & reliable; balance of security and flexibility; achievement-oriented, pragmatic and adaptive, well-organized; risk-averse; regrounding; family & friends	Success-Oriented	New middle class; social climber mentality; willingness to perform; seeking balance (security & flexibility, work & family, tradition & modernity); ambivalent attachment to old ways
Modern Mainstream	Harmony & domestic happiness; family-relatives-friends; comfort and joy; social integration and material security; sceptical and resistant toward social change	Adapting Mainstream	Materialistic but conservative; value status hierarchies; order and harmony; modernity at work & tradition at home; religion & morality; pressure to keep up
Traditionals	Security and the status quo; rigid adherence to traditional values (e.g. sacrifice, duty, order); honest, modest & down to earth; "we little people"	Traditional Popular (rural)	Strong family & community ties; religious ritual & belief; ritualized practices of everyday life; obedience and modesty; legible rules of conduct; resist loss of traditions
Consumer Materialists	Materialistic & hedonistic; striving to keep up, but often disadvantaged and uprooted; sometimes precarious; reactive orientation; solidarity, toughness & resilience	Urban Working Class	Historically underprivileged; displaced & overwhelmed by modernisation; striving for basic needs; short-term consumer orientation; hybrid popular cultures; solidarity within own family and network
Sensation- Oriented	Looking for fun, thrills & entertainment; unconventional & rebellious; live for today, here and now; escapist tendencies; trends and subcultures; independence; spontaneity	Fun & Money-Driven	Spontaneity, thrills & entertainment; trend-consciousness & Western orientation; hedonistic materialism; short- to medium-term planning; ambivalent relationship with traditional values

Using a multi-item scale, the Meta-Milieu distribution of a given country can be tracked and compared with others, as shown below (these distributions refer to the established markets model, and are representative for national populations age 18-69 [exc Japan, age 18-64]):

Milieu	USA	UK	France	Germany	Italy	Spain	Japan
Established	12%	10%	11%	11%	10%	9%	10%
Intellectuals	8%	9%	9%	11%	10%	9%	10%
Performers	10%	10%	9%	10%	9%	10%	11%
Cosmopolitan Avantgarde	7%	7%	5%	9%	6%	6%	5%
Adaptive Navigators	13%	10%	9%	11%	10%	9%	7%
Modern Mainstream	14%	15%	15%	14%	16%	17%	14%
Traditionals	11%	10%	13%	9%	11%	12%	15%
Consumer Materialists	10%	11%	11%	9%	10%	11%	11%
Sensation- Oriented	15%	19%	18%	17%	18%	18%	17%

SINUS-Milieu models have been used particularly frequently in research on media consumption and behaviour. The milieu indicator is among the standardized set of methods used to evaluate television viewership in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Since 2017, SINUS Meta-Milieus have been integrated into the international Kantar Target Group Index media survey.

The SINUS-Milieu model has also exerted reciprocal influence on academic sociology in Germany, for instance in the work of Stefan Hradil, Gerhard Schulze, and Michael Vester. It has recently been critiqued for inadequately representing social inequality and ethnic difference, but defended with the argument that ethnicity is itself socially constructed in value-loaded terms.

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References

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