What are marketing psychographics?
Posted by Dale Berkebile on Mon, Jun 22, 2009
In this series of blog posts we started with a basic marketing definition, then we moved on to demographics and what they mean to marketing. We are going to close this series with psychographics.
Again we will tap into Wikipedia for a definition:
In the field of marketing, demographics, opinion research, and social research in general, psychographic variables
are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes,
interests, or lifestyles. They are also called IAO variables (for
Interests, Activities, and Opinions). They can be contrasted with demographic variables (such as age and gender), behavioral variables (such as usage rate or loyalty), and firmographic variables (such as industry, seniority and functional area).
When a relatively complete assessment of a person or group's psychographic make-up is constructed, this is called a psychographic profile. Psychographic profiles are used in market segmentation as well as in advertising.
Some categories of psychographic factors used in market segmentation include:
- Activity, Interest, Opinion (AIO)
- Attitudes
- Values
Psychographics can also be seen as an equivalent of the concept of
"culture" as used most commonly in national segmentation.
Brandwise partners up with a data house to help create psychographic data. This is something that needs to be done by a professional experienced with this type of data. This type of data is also good for customer profiling to learn more about the buying process and how to better create offers to specific customer segments.
I know it sounds a little "Big Brother", but what if your favorite brand offered you better products based on your needs and wants. Would this interest you as a consumer? I know it would for me. This could help all the marketing become more relevant to both the customer and the brand supplier.
The goal is using data like this to add science to the art of marketing. This helps provide stronger more effective marketing. Marketing that is able to track and measure the results of the campaigns. Servicing the customer better is what this is all about, After all this is why we are in business isn't it?
