Over the last half-century, there has been a population movement from rural to urban areas. Because many urban areas cross political boundaries, the Office of Management and Budget has defined three metropolitan statistical areas. A Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) is a city of at least fifty thousand people with a surrounding rural population. A Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA) is an area of more than a million people with internal and social links. If two or more PMSAs are geographically linked, they are referred to as Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSA). There are twenty CMSAs in the United States, with New York, northern New Jersey, and Long Island being the largest. This trend toward urbanization has implications for marketing.

In highly industrialized countries, the growth of population has slowed, forcing marketers to adopt segment or target marketing. Segment marketing requires the marketer...