Consumer Behavior and Marketing Tools to Use
Personalities, self-concepts, and lifestyles all influence consumer behavior. All these factors play a role in what consumers want and what brands they stay loyal to. For instance, I love being active and playing sports, so I stay loyal to a few different sports brands like Nike and Adidas. Whereas I might sleep in active wear instead of PJs. To a marketer, this is a great way to find what your consumers want and need by determining their lifestyles, personalities, and self-concepts.
VALs
VALs might sound like an alien term but it stands for values and lifestyles and refers to a market research tool. VALs is a tool used for psychographic segmentation and luckily has a site you can explore and find out your own VALs classification type! Click on the Link below to see!
http://www.strategicbusinessinsights.com/vals/presurvey.shtml
My VALs Results
As you can see from the image, my primary VALs type was experiencers and my secondary was strivers. While you might not get a good understanding of just the words, I also clicked on both types to read more about them.
Experiencers:
- Want everything.
- At first in and first out of trend adoption.
- Go against the current mainstream.
- Are up on the latest fashions.
- Love physical activity (are sensation seeking).
- See themselves as very sociable.
- Are spontaneous.
- Have a heightened sense of visual stimulation.
Strivers:
- Have revolving employment; high temporary unemployment.
- Use video and video games as a form of fantasy.
- Are fun loving.
- Are imitative.
- Rely heavily on public transportation.
- Are the center of low-status street culture.
- Desire to better their lives but have difficulty in realizing their desire.
- Wear their wealth.
These results were fairly accurate besides the strivers section for me because I for sure know I am fun loving (how could I not be?) but I do not wear my wealth. All jokes aside, this test was accurate and could be used to find consumer psychographics in my area.
PRIZM
PRIZM, another alien like word, is also an effective market segmentation tool and stands for Potential Rating Index for Zip Markets. This tool is built around geographic neighborhood data. There is no personal test but there is a place to enter your zip code and see what different demographics and behavior segments pop-up. Check out the link below to see what your zip code brings up.
https://claritas360.claritas.com/mybestsegments/
47 Striving Selfies was the category that fit me best and was found in my zip code.
First, I entered the zip code that I was living in.
Then I clicked on the 47 Striving Selfies as it was the category that suites me best and continued to search the results.
Although I am not sure what a Wingstop is, I’m sure that it is yummy. This information was fairly accurate as well besides the household devices I own and not knowing what a Wingstop is (maybe something like a KFC?).
Closing
Personalities, self-concepts, and lifestyles are all important tools for marketers to use to target their consumers. I highly suggest using these tools, if you are a marketer or not, to see what the different types of psychographics and demographics fall in your area and what your personality types are.
