In my master’s thesis I researched the social categorization of people in the field of marketing and sales. In the theoretical part I covered the factors that have a great influence and contribute to categorization. As part of this I wrote about discrimination, prejudice and stereotypes. I also defined the concept of categorization and more precisely researched the concept of social categorization. Then I focused on marketing and sales, where I described the social categorization of people. In the last part I paid special attention to social work, which, like market activity, contains a lot of interaction with people and where social categorization can be present. Social categorization can be one of the challenges that social workers face on a daily basis in their work and can have a great impact on their work with users. In the empirical part I researched how people are categorized in marketing activities. With the help of ten interviews with saleswomen I researched the following topics in more detail: the way of categorizing customers, discrimination in marketing activities, the impact of categorizing people on product sales, interaction relationships and the experience of categorized customers. I have summarized and described the mentioned topics in more detail in the results. During my research I discover how saleswomen categorize people and what criteria they use. I also discover how categorization affects the sale of products and the interaction between the customer and the saleswoman, and how saleswomen experience individual categorized groups of customers. Through research I find that social categorization is present in marketing activities and has a great impact. Based on this, in the proposals I list options that could mitigate or eliminate social categorization.
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