Version: 1.0.0 | Published: 12 Jun 2025 | Updated: 0 days ago
Consumer Vulnerability
Dataset
Summary
Tier:
Tier 0
Documentation
Associated Media:
Description:
A geodemographic classification of consumer vulnerability at output area level.
Some consumers are more vulnerable to marketing practices due to their personal traits such age, health or household makeup. Consumer vulnerability is defined as the risk that a consumer’s mental, physical or financial welfare may be damaged when engaging in a market interaction. This vulnerability varies by product and industry. While consumer vulnerability has been discussed at length in academic literature and regulatory guidelines, there has not been a comprehensive geographical assessment of consumer vulnerability in the United Kingdom.
How Published:
Data asset provided by the Healthy & Sustainable Places Data Service
(ES/Z504336/1), originally produced by the CDRC (ES/L011840/1;ES/L011891/1)
Coverage
Spatial
Spatial Units:
Output Areas (2011)
Spatial Coverage:
United Kingdom
Temporal
Frequency:
STATIC
Date of First Release:
04 February 2020
Temporal Aggregation:
Snapshot in time
Geographic Bounding Box
Lower Left Latitude:
-82
Lower Left Longitude:
49.9
Upper Right Latitude:
1.9
Upper Right Longitude:
61.0
Provenance
Source:
Administrative Data
Purpose:
Data were originally collected for administrative purposes and subsequently
combined into a geodemographic classification.
Collection Status:
Complete
Method of Collection:
The variables selected to use for clustering were derived from 2011 Census
outputs, based on the whether they suitably describe consumer vulnerability as
defined above. In addition data from a commercial partner was used for cluster
validation. Highly correlated variables were considered for removal from the
initial selection. Counts were converted to percentages for each output area.
Data were then transformed using Inverse Hyperbolic Sine and standardised using
z-scores. Principal component analysis was performed on the treated data before
clustering. K-means was performed to cluster the data using the first 10
principal components as inputs. The optimum number of clusters was first
determined by running k-means at each value of k (number of clusters) from 2 to
25. This was then used when creating the final clustering. (6 clusters).
Access and Governance
Usage
Resource Creator:
- Michael Adcock
- Nik Lomax (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9504-7570)
- Stephen Clark (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4090-6002)
- Oliver Clark (https://orcid.org/0009-0001-9607-0470)
- Francesca Pontin (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7143-8718)
Data Use Requirements:
NO REQUIREMENTS
Access
Jurisdiction:
Great Britain
Data Controller:
Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service
Availability Status:
Active
Licence:
UK Open Government Licence V3 (OGL)
Format and Standards
Language:
English
File Format:
.csv
Estimated Dataset Size:
<25MB
Enrichment and Linkage
Linkage Opportunity:
Join to 2011 Census OA data.
Data Pre-Processing Resources:
Origin
Name:
Data Catalogue