Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation divides markets based upon differences in consumer lifestyles and involves examining attributes such as personality dimensions, identifying characteristics and consumer values that represent the underlying motives of consumer behavior. Specifically, the determination of lifestyles is usually based on an analysis of a composite of the activities, interests and opinions (AIOs) of consumers. As such, lifestyle represents a patterned way of life into which consumers fit various products, activities and resources and describes the groups' typical consumption behaviors and expectations. These lifestyles are then correlated with the consumers' product, brand and/or media usage. Currently there are numerous classification schemes detailing lifestyles that attempt to explain consumer behavior. To date, no consensus has been reached regarding standardized lifestyle segments that exist in the United States or in other countries. Various psychographic studies have reached differing conclusions about the number and nature of lifestyle categories. This paper explores various popular psychographic segmentation schemes, detailing the way in which they use psychological aspects of the consumer to categorize market segments and predict behavior.