Psychographic Profiling and Segmentation Explained...

Psychographics is the study of personality, values, attitudes and lifestyles. Psychographic segmentation involves dividing a market into segments based upon different personality traits, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles of consumers. This form of segmentation is advantageous because it helps brand owners engage better with their customers, design more suitable products and improve their marketing in a focused manner.

The Difference between Psychographic and Demographic

Both Psychographic and Demographic information play an important role within market research and the provision of customer insight, and both are fundamental inputs into business and marketing strategy. For those new to the term, in a nutshell the definition of Psychographics is  the study of Personality, Values, Opinions, Attitudes, Interests and Lifestyles. Psychographic variables are sometimes confused with demographics which are more factual in nature (i.e. demographics include terms such as Age, Gender, Social class, Ethnicity etc).  On a larger scale, psychographic profiling at the national level is the equivalent to the concept of “culture” for the country as a whole.

Psychographics are typically used alongside demographics by businesses to create a detailed understanding of the customer and customer segments within the market for marketing purposes. When a complete profile of a person or psychographic make-up is constructed, this is called a “psychographic profile” which is often illustrated as an amalgamation of pictures, words, attitudes. Psychographic profiling is used in  as well as in . Some categories of psychographic factors used in market segmentation include:

• Activities and interest
• Attitudes and behaviours
• Values and beliefs

“Psychographics are about using the demographic information you have for your buyer persona to figure out more about their lifestyle, their behaviours and their habits.” – HubSpot

The  table below shows the demographic and characteristic of a female gym goer :

Looking at the above, it’s easy to see why we need both demographic and psychographic data in marketing – at a very basic level demographics tell us ‘who’ is buying your product and psychographics tell us ‘why’ they are buying . Over the years demographics such as age and social class have become less good predictors of people’s attitudes and behaviours because people are living younger for longer and that social class boundaries have largely disappeared.

How to profile your customer

Quantitative interviewing methods such as telephone, face-to-face and online surveys are the ideal way of capturing demographic and psychographic insight into your customer. We typically recommend sample sizes over 1,000 as this allows for more elaborate analysis and customer segmentation. It is well known that the quality of the research is only as good as the expertise that goes into writing and developing the questionnaire. With hundreds of years of collective experience our survey experts can help you create the optimal questionnaire and ensure all important areas of interest are covered. (If you have budget, always consider starting the process with a qualitative research study such as focus groups in order to develop ideas and hypotheses about who your customers are).

For more information on getting to know your customers better, please complete the form below or contact Duncan Swan here.