Page 127 - DMGT507_SALES AND PROMOTIONS MANAGEMENT

Unit 7: Advertising Strategy: Fundamentals

Notes
Table 7.1: Life-style Categories and Examples
Activities Interests Opinions Demographics
Work Family Themselves Age
Hobbies Home Social issues Education
Social events Job Politics Income
Vacation Community Business Occupation
Entertainment Recreation Economics Family size
Club membership Fashion Education Dwelling
Community Food Products Geography
Shopping Media Future City size
Sports Achievements Culture Stage in life cycle

Source: "The Concept and Application of Life Style Segmentation." By Joseph T. Plummer Journal of
Marketing, p. 34, published by American Marketing Association.
There are other approaches to using psychographics segmentation. Stanford Research Institute
(SRI) developed a popular approach to psychographics segmentation, called VALS (values and
life-styles), based on Abraham Maslow's theory of need hierarchy and the concept of personality
characteristics developed an approach to segment consumers according to their values and life-
styles in U.S.A. Advertisers faced some problems with this method and SRI refined the research
as VALS 2, which puts less emphasis on values and more on psychological support of consumer
behaviour. This approach predicts consumer behaviour by profiling their attitudes.
According to the current classification scheme (Figure 7.1), VALS typology breaks consumers
into eight groups based on their primary motivations and resources. Primary motivations
represent the type of goals, pattern of attitudes and activities that help people reinforce, sustain,
or modify their social self-image. This is a fundamental human need. This scheme shows
consumers' primary motivations as: Ideals, Achievement, and Self-expression. Each of these
three main motivations typifies distinct attitudes, life-styles, and decision-making approaches.
The scheme shows a kind of continuum: high resources - high innovation to low resources - low
innovation. Ideals, achievement, and self-expression are three specific patterns that relate to
consumer behaviour. Consumers with the ideals (principles) motivation get involved in
introspection to make choices and are less inclined to consider physical experiences or social
pressure. Choices of consumers with achievement motivation are in relation to the anticipated
reactions and concerns of others in the group to which they belong. Those with self-expression
(action) motivation base their choices on consideration to related activity. They place value on
feelings resulting from action.
Innovators (formerly actualisers): This segment is small in size compared to other seven but
may be the most attractive market because of their high incomes. They are among those who are
at the leading edge of change. Innovators are established or getting established leaders in
business or government, yet they seek challenges. Image is important to them as an expression
of their taste, independence, and character. These people are successful, sophisticated, active,
and with high self-esteem. They are interested in growth and development; they explore, and
express themselves in many different ways. They have social and intellectual interests, and are
open to social change. They are guided sometimes by ideals and at other times by desire and are
fond of reading. They prefer premium products to display their success to others.

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