How can we describe psychographics?
Psychographics is a qualitative methodology which is used to describe consumers on psychological attributes. Psychographics is co-existing with the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles.
Let us learn more about Psychological criteria considered in Psychographics.
Interests
Interests differ from the word activities in that they are generally related to deeper areas of the subject’s life. For example, an interest in a healthy diet for children may be related to the fact that the subject has a growing young family, while interest in Mindfulness may reflect a busy and under pressure professional life.
Activities
This refers to hobbies that can be active or passive in nature. Think about tennis, collect stamps, cook or travel! To understand the reason behind including activities in a list of psychological criteria, we need to understand that activities usually reflect the personality of an individual.
Attitudes and Opinions
These two can be hard to distinguish! An attitude represents a feeling or a general disposition towards someone or something. This can be positive or negative, but most often. Whereas, personal opinion is a more specific and passionate conviction. The subject of this belief may be of a serious nature (for example, intensive agriculture or global warming) or trivial (e.g. Mac vs PC, KFC vs McDonald’s).
Lifestyle
Lifestyle is an obvious criterion, and this has many implications for marketing. A person’s lifestyle gives an excellent indication of what he or she really values. This may be the result of your situation (for example, a frugal lifestyle may reflect low income), but if it is self-imposed, it is more likely to reflect fundamental beliefs, desires, or interests. Examples of different lifestyles are healthy, ostensive, active, religious, and alternative.
Values
Personal values are often based on deep beliefs and often “inherited” parents. Just as shared values can be a form of family bonding or friendship, a brand that shares or is compatible with the consumer’s core values can be considered a spirit associated with it.
How is psychographics utilised in advertising and general marketing?
1) Building an emotional connect
We can use psychographics to create advertising which is not only powerful but one that truly resonates. Many successful ads succeed precisely because they have been able to establish a secure emotional connection between the brand and the consumer.
Of course, this does not always depend on innovative psychological ideas – do not have to be Christmas ads and those that offer a nice dog!
However, some of the world’s most famous brands, such as Guinness and Doff, have managed to create advertisements about breaking the emotional “facts” that resonate with consumers around the world.
2) Improving the power of online marketing
Psychography may have been present since the 1960s, but since the arrival of social media and Internet marketing, it has come back!
Platforms like Facebook are rich in psychographic data, while the increasing sophistication of data mining and machine learning tools means that online brands can continuously improve the power of their online presence.
This includes:
3) Creating greater customer loyalty
Another benefit of psychology is its ability to make consumers more emotionally connected with a brand and, therefore, more loyal to it. Found that when they feel brand-bound, 86% of consumers will rely on brand innovations more quickly, 87% will pay a high price, 87% will brand the brand through taste and exchange while 88% will defend it.
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