{"id":48551,"date":"2020-09-05T10:33:56","date_gmt":"2020-09-05T14:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/?p=48551"},"modified":"2023-06-01T03:13:52","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T07:13:52","slug":"psychographic-segmentation-a-vital-component-of-market-segmentation-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/psychographic-segmentation-a-vital-component-of-market-segmentation-studies\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychographic Segmentation – A vital component of market segmentation studies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defining psychographic segmentation as part of the extensive <\/span>marketing segmentation <\/span>landscape is like a day-trip through the countryside, with scenery changing every couple of hours. The experience is one of merging vistas, each one different in its own right. The most obvious market segmentation exercises are undoubtedly geographic and <\/span>demographic segmentation<\/span> analysis arenas. They are descriptive and revealing in so many respects. However, where people live and what they look like, leaves gaps.<\/span> It doesn\u2019t tell you why they behave the way they do.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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If you could psychoanalyze every customer – discover the inner thought and emotional drivers of their actions – it would be the most profound psychological segmentation anyone could ever do. It\u2019s possible – take a B2B situation with one customer, for example:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Imagine a company putting out tenders for a vast factory construction estimated at around $30 million. It\u2019s a single company embarking on a lone project. Nonetheless, its magnitude marks it as a viable market segment, warranting detailed psychoanalysis of all the involved decision-makers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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However, when hundreds, thousands, and millions of customers are under the psychographic segmentation spotlight, the challenge is far more complicated. In such cases, we have to assume that there’s a commonality of purpose governing buying behavior. If that’s true (and it usually is), we have the challenging task of discovering the forces that create the commonality.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

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What is Psychographic Segmentation, and how does it differ from Behavioral Segmentation?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Psychographic segmentation is the <\/span>market research<\/span><\/a> study of the “why.” More specifically, why people, demographically defined, living in the geographically targeted marketplaces, act the way they do. Behavioral segmentation is a close cousin, where we group people whose actions are the same into segments. The latter sections off by the observed activities; psychographic segmentation divides respondents into groups with the same underlying motivations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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A case study that illustrates the primary differences<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two “in-their-fifties,” caucasian family men (Demographic Segmentation), living in the Dallas upper-middle-class suburbs (Geographic Segmentation), order more or less the same mountain bike on Amazon (Behavioral Segmentation). At all three levels of breakdown, they look practically identical.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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A psychographic segmentation exercise broke the illusion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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