COMM 390: Profile of a changing rural area in East Tennessee

In order to check out the demographic profiles that Claritas Corp. of San Diego puts up on the Web, I looked up zip code for Clinton, Tenn., the nearest town to the community where I grew up and the county seat of my home county. It's a good test of Claritas' typology, because its demographics have changed over the years.

Clinton, Tenn. Photo Brian Stansberry, Wikipedia Commons

Clinton is located about 20 miles north of Knoxville, a Sun Belt metro area of 750,000 population. Clinton used to be a mill town (in the picture above, you can see the water tower from a textille mill that employed hundreds of people from 1906 until 1967. The economy is now diversified, although the western part of Anderson County is in the Appalachian coalfields. According to the town's Wikipedia profile, Clinton's population in the 2000 census was 9,409, and its median household income was $32,120 -- less than the national median of $41,994, but not much below the Tennessee state median of $36,360.

Clinton High School was the first in the South to admit black students after Brown v. Board of Education was handed down, and the Tennessee National Guard was called out to restore order (see photo at left). Its population is 95.5 percent white and 2.7 percent African American, compared to 80 percent white and 16 percent black in Tennessee. Median age is 39 years (compared to 39.5 years for Tennessee and 35.3 years nationally. Clinton's post office serves three rural routes, taking in a good chunk of rural Anderson County including the parts closest to Knoxville, Interstate 75 and the U.S. Department of Energy lab at nearby Oak Ridge. It is mostly ridge-and-valley country. Farms are small and their owners typically rely on off-farm income from working in Knoxville. Every I go back there to visit, I see new subdivisions and mobile parks where pastures and cornfields used to be.

So you'd expect a mixture of rural, small-town and blue-collar suburban lifestyles to be reflected in Clinton's demographics. That is exactly what Claritas Corp. finds. You can get there by entering Clinton's zip code (37716) in the Zip Code Look-up. Claritas' types, or market segments, are listed as:

• Crossroads Villagers. "... a classic rural lifestyle. Residents are high school-educated, with downscale incomes and modest housing; one-quarter live in mobile homes. And there's an air of self-reliance in these households as Crossroads Villagers help put food on the table through fishing, gardening, and hunting."
  
  
• Heartlanders. "This widespread segment consists of older couples with white-collar jobs living in sturdy, unpretentious homes [small middle-class towns]. In these communities of small families and empty-nesting couples, Heartlanders residents pursue a rustic lifestyle where hunting and fishing remain prime leisure activities along with cooking, sewing, camping, and boating."
  
  
• Old Milltowns. "Today, the majority of residents are retired singles and couples, living on downscale incomes in pre-1960 homes and apartments. For leisure, they enjoy gardening, sewing, socializing at veterans clubs, or eating out at casual restaurants."
  
  
• Red, White & Blues. "... typically live in exurban towns rapidly morphing into bedroom suburbs. Their streets feature new fast-food restaurants, and locals have recently celebrated the arrival of chains like Wal-Mart, Radio Shack, and Payless Shoes. Middle-aged, high school educated, and lower-middle class, these folks tend to have solid, blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, milling, and construction."
  
  
• Young & Rustic "... is composed of middle age, restless singles. These folks tend to be lower-middle-income, high school-educated, and live in tiny apartments in the nation's exurban towns. With their service industry jobs and modest incomes, these folks still try to fashion fast-paced lifestyles centered on sports, cars, and dating."
  

For a bunch of market research people out of San Diego, I'd say Claritas did a pretty good job of profiling a rural community between the coalfields and the suburban sprawl of a major Sunbelt metro area. Ask yourself: How different are the people in Clinton, Tenn., from people in Springfield and rural Sangamon County? How much would you expect to see different products in their Wal-Marts and Kroger stores?