Personalities| Lifestyle| Self-Concepts
On a day to day basis one may not stop to think “what’s my personality type?” “How is my lifestyle different from others?” “how do others perceive me?” It may be easy for most to go about their daily lives without pondering these questions, but for marketing professionals, it’s the opposite. Markets goal is to pin-point lifestyles and personalities along with demographics, psychographics, geographic’s, and behaviors.
Aside from the 4 marketing segments, marketers also use two main tools for lifestyle analysis of the consumer;
VALS (Values & Lifestyles)- A psychographic method in consumer research consisting of 8 different groups (Innovators, thinkers, achievers, experiencers, believers, strivers, makers, survivors) in which consumers are classified based on, resources and consumer behavioral motivations. VALS purpose is to get know the customer; Ownership of products, hobbies, media preferences, and attitudes/opinions. I personally enjoy outdoor activities such as camping and hiking. This information would be useful for a company like REI for marketing campaign and advertising. By creating a more personalized ad there’s more chance the consumer has a sense of brand awareness about the company, therefore more likely to make a purchase. By creating customer relationships and good advertising a consumer is likely to buy something they weren’t aware they needed.
According to the VAL’s survey my primary type; makers and my secondary type; experiencers. The values I share with the “makers”; distrust in the government, have strong outdoor interests, straight forward, and wish to own land (5/7). Values I share with experiences include; belief that friends are important, I’m spontaneous, and love physical activity (3/9)
If you’re interested in taking the VALS survey yourself, click the below link;
http://www.strategicbusinessinsights.com/vals/presurvey.shtml
PRIZM; This analysis is more extensive and in depth, it uses a term knows as the; Common Lifestyle segment. It consists of 67 individual segments each with different, but also similar, traits and characteristics, classified as sub-groups known as; lifestyle groups and social groups. (#64) Family thrifts is in the lifestyle group, I feel fit into this sub-group best because I share traits; younger than 55, low income working entry level jobs, small city in which I rent an apartment and don’t get the chance to vacation much. (65)Young and rustic is in the social group and I believe it is the most accurate description associated to my life. Although I don’t live in a rural area my family owns a farm, I am under 55 years old and have a low income. I enjoy the outdoors and do not have kids.
Below is a screen capture of how the PRIZM is laid out, you can access this via https://claritas360.claritas.com/mybestsegments/#segDetails
As one may assume by understanding more about a customer through their lifestyles, behaviors, motivation, hobbies, location, interests, and more, that the seller or marketer can better pin point their target audience.