254 The Marketing Book
would amount to £5 billion per year if averaged
across the UK.
Clearly there are ethical issues here. Chil-
dren have not fully matured, by definition, yet
they are being heavily targeted, sometimes in
subtle ways by marketers who want them to
develop brand preferences. Some retailers even
have loyalty schemes for babies! The Royal
Bank of Scotland obtained details of children
from subscriptions to the Disney Book Club
and sent them offers for a credit card. Children
as young as 5 received the mailing offering a 9.9
per cent APR! (Anon, 1997).
Overall, then, we have had a brief look
through some of the more prominent demo-
graphic characteristics. If you consider the
implications of these for the drinks company’s
two main potential segments (using age, gen-
der, social grade and family life cycle), then you
would probably be able to devise a useful
targeting strategy for each. Indeed, if we then
integrate the above demographic variables
rather than just consider each independently,
an even more effective strategy should emerge,
but that’s something you can do for your next
assignment or seminar!
Psychographics
This name covers lifestyle, personality and self-
image. The last two can be discovered in the
previous edition of this book (Evans, 1999) but
lifestyle is worth some discussion, especially
because it is important to differentiate tradi-
tional from contemporary lifestyle segmenta-
tion. The latter is covered in a later section, but
the following is an analysis of how lifestyle
segmentation was originally conceived.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle is based typically on the presentation
to respondents of a series of statements (Likert
scales). Table 10.2 reproduces a short selection
of the (246) lifestyle statements used in the
Target Group Index annual research pro-
gramme (BMRB, 1988).
Respondents are presented with these
statements and asked to give their degree of
agreement with each. An example will demon-
strate the approach. In the 1980s, Levi Strauss
in the USA went through a new product
development programme concerning a range of
up-market men’s suits. The market research
programme revolved around an attempt to
discover ‘lifestyles’. This is concerned with
investigating activities, interests and opinions,
sometimes referred to as AIO analysis. Such
lifestyle data are then cluster analysed to
produce groupings of respondents which are
relatively homogeneous and at the same time
heterogeneous betweenclusters in terms of their
activities, interests and opinions. Each cluster
would then be allocated a somewhat glib title.
In the lifestyle research programme, Levi
Strauss labelled the resulting segments: ‘classic
independent’, the ‘mainstream traditionalist’,
the ‘price shopper’, the ‘trendy casual’, and so
on (BBC, 1984). This sort of profile will help
determine appropriate product/service fea-
tures and will help to arrive at an advertising
message which is congruent with the segment’s
lifestyle.
A UK lifestyle typology was named Taylor
Nelson’s Applied Futures (McNulty and
McNulty, 1987) and identified the followingTable 10.2 Examples of lifestyle
statements
I buy clothes for comfort, not for style
Once I find a brand I like, I tend to stick to it
I always buy British whenever I can
I dress to please myself
My family rarely sits down to a meal together
at home
I enjoy eating foreign food
I like to do a lot when I am on holiday