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Lifestyle Segmentation

From Attitudes, Interests and Opinions, to Values, Aesthetic Styles, Life Visions and Media Preferences

Ghent University, Department of Communication Sciences, Universiteitstraat 8, 9000 Gent, Belgium, patrick.vyncke{at}rug.ac.be

Nowhere in the field of mass communication research has the concept of `lifestyle' been so prominently and fruitfully used as in the field of marketing communication, where it has been shown that lifestyles influence both consumption patterns and the processing of different forms of marketing communication. Therefore, the lifestyle concept has become the core of a special kind of segmentation research called `psychographics'. This psychographic or lifestyle research usually takes as its point of departure extensive and ad hoc AIO (activities, interests and opinions) surveys, which then lead to often very colourful and useful lifestyle typologies using the technique of cluster analysis. In this article, new approaches to constructing lifestyle typologies are developed using the more general and stable concepts of values, aesthetic styles and life visions. Their applicability, both in isolation and in combination, to form meaningful lifestyle typologies is compared to traditional demographic segmentation criteria such as gender, age, social class and stage of life. This is done in four different markets: goods (cars), services (tourism), not-forprofit (political parties) and media (television programmes, films and magazines). In each of these markets, we compare the different segmentation systems in terms of most wanted product attributes or benefits as found in a survey using a quota sample of the Flemish adult population. It is found that values, aesthetic styles and life visions — either alone or in combination — can lead to very balanced and meaningful lifestyle typologies. In all four markets studied here, these lifestyle segmentations clearly surpass classic demographic segmentations in yielding significant differences in terms of product attribute or benefit evaluation. Finally, the research results clearly demonstrate the value of a media section as an essential part of a lifestyle questionnaire.

Key Words: aesthetic styles • lifestyles • life visions • market segmentation • psychographics • values

European Journal of Communication, Vol. 17, No. 4, 445-463 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/02673231020170040301


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