Wagner Kamakura is Marketing engineer and Global Marketing professor at the Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. In collaboration with USP professor José Alfonso Mazzon, he conducted a research to assess how the Brazilian middle class has grown and differentiated, and how the previous group division is no longer enough.

This is the original unedited English version of the interview to Kamakura published by AmericaEconomia on 3 September 2012.

It is said that your research  conducted in Brazil, resulted in a “new model that classifies consumers into social strata”. Could you briefly explain what are the main differences with previous models?

The most popular criterion for socio-economic stratification in Brazil is “Criterio Brasil,” which was developed by ABEP (Brazilian Association of Market Research Agencies) at a time when  attention by most marketers focused on the top strata, because they were a substantial portion of the Brazilian market for consumer goods.  Due…