Introduction to A to B workshop

Transport ‘s Share of Carbon EmissionsPromise – no more figures and statistics from us today!

Go back 300 years: pre-industrial society – most people travelled very little.

Industrialisation brought in some migration from the countryside to the new towns, some daily commuting to work

The availability of motorised transport further enhanced that commuting trend – some people could live farther away from the (often unpleasant) areas in which they worked

But not just travel for work: the freedom of choice culture led to people travelling forshopping, leisure, kids schooling – and of course holidays

Many people then became car dependent – they needed cars to live lives they are living...Augmented by a further socio-economic trend (pointed out by transport planner Chris Bainbridge): dual income households, with both partners working, make it more likely that at least one partner will have a substantial journey to work

...while air travel enables easy travel over great distances for work and leisure leading to what Gillian Anable referred to as air travel dependency, discussed in my Green Christian article...

... and then we come to the marketing processesThe market research of the motorised transport industries picks up information about the different life situations of different people; car firms etc then design different vehicles or services to meet these different needs, the term demographic segmentation refers to these differences

But modern marketing goes way beyond this demographic segmentation -

Psychographic segmentation means segmentation by lifestyles. Market research categories people according to their aspirations, their social and emotional needs and wants – are you an innovator, a striver, a believer, an experiencer

Psychographic segmentation segmentation by lifestyles.

Eg innovator, striver, believer,

experiencer

Not a car for everyone – Adolf Hitler’s ambition for the VW

But for everyone a carSee Wolfgang Sachs’s research. We have not time to go into all the sophisticated marketing tricks used by the car industry in particularNor the powerful lobby of government by the industry for the building, or roads and airports and for keeping fuel duty down.

But we can see from this analysis:

1. the futility of generalising from your own experience

2. the pointlessness of prescriptions like ‘use your car less’

use less = useless

Political level

Parochial or community

Personal level

Hackbridge