How Can Companies Segment Their Customers Based on Psychographics?


It is crucial for companies to divide their target customers into different segments. These different segments act like a focus group for the company, and when the company understands the focus group better, they are able to serve and communicate better with its customers. Different ads will hit different nerves with the ad viewers or customers, and for ensuring volume for the sales company, marketers have to hit the right nerve. When we do the segmentation of markets, there are several approaches that a company can adopt, and those are −

  • Geographical segmentation of markets

  • Behavioral segmentation of markets

  • Demographic segmentation of markets

  • Psychographic segmentation of markets

In this article, we will be diving deep into the psychographic segmentation of markets, how it helps the company understand their customers better, and how companies can collect data related to psychographic segmentation.

The Concept of Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation is the process of dividing the target customers of the brand or the product into different units on the basis of their lifestyle, attitude, opinion, social status, activities, interests, and others. It is a difficult and subjective form of segmentation for companies, but if done right, it can yield supernormal results for the company. Psychographic segmentation answers the following questions for the company −

  • How do customers perceive the brand's products and services?

  • What do customers really want, and why do they really want what they want?

  • What are the gaps or pain points of the product that the customer is consuming currently?

  • What are the opportunities for engagement with customers now and in the future?

  • How can a company better communicate with its target audience?

The Psychographic Elements of the Consumers can be Divided into 5 Different Types, and Those are

  • Personality traits − this helps the company understand their nature as well as their reactions. The personality of an individual can be of different types, like extrovert individuals, introvert individuals, ambivert individuals, open individuals, considerate individuals, inconsiderate individuals, narcissist individuals, emotionally stable individuals, and others.

  • Attitude of the customer − This is based on the cultural background of the customer, the family of origin, and other factors.

  • Lifestyle of the individual − this helps the company determine the way of life of an individual. It is affected by various factors like occupation, family background, income status, educational level, habits, and others.

  • Social status of the customer − The social status the customer is in or wants to also tells a lot about the psychology of the customer, which influences their buying patterns and their motivations behind purchase decisions.

  • Activities, interests, and opinions of the customers − This helps to read a lot between the lines of the company.

There are Various ways of Doing Psychographic Segmentation

Companies must better understand and read their customers' psychologies, or use the psychographic segmentation approaches listed below −

  • Creating a buyer persona − This helps the company understand the different types of ideal customers for the brand; here, the company actually pictures what their buyer would look like. The company answers various questions while developing the buyer persona of its customers, and those questions are: What does the customer do? What is the marital status of the customer? What is the educational level of the customer? What are the types of people the customer hangs out with? What kinds of parties does the customer attend? What type of clothes does the customer wear? What is the income status or occupation of the customer? Where does the customer reside? What does the customer do in their leisure time? And others.

  • These help the company in deciding the various ideal customers the product might have, and after knowing that, companies can use the strengths of these people. For example, if we create the persona of an individual in his late twenties who is currently single and working hard to climb the corporate ladder, he will want a product that earns him social status and recognition.

  • Segment the customers on the basis of what they value the most − When companies start reading their customers, they find that there are different things that customers value. Some might value the product of the company; some might value the aesthetics of the product, the comfort or functionality of the product, or the social status that the product brings to the users and others. When the company finds out this information, it can cater its product offering as well as plan its marketing initiatives as per the data. For example, if the company wants to target price-sensitive customers, it can provide the same product by reducing its features at different prices.

  • For example, One Plus, a brand that sells mobile phones, launched three versions of the One Plus Nord, providing different storage options like 64GB, 128 GB, and 256GB at three different processing levels with almost identical features and looks. This also happens in the grocery store, where the owner would have three different apples on display at different prices and varying quality for the user to choose from. The concept is also known as pay at will.

The Various ways in Which Companies can Collect data Related to Psychographic Segmentation are

  • Open-ended questions − These are the type of questions that allow the respondents to answer as per their understanding. It does not provide the respondent with pre-defined and acceptable answers; instead, respondents can write down what exactly they feel, why they feel what they feel, and to what intensity they feel it regarding the products and services of the brand.

  • Likert scale questions − these are the questions that help the respondent draw their likeliness regarding the different aspects of the brand, its products, and its competitors. It helps the company understand the general mood of the respondents and the market as a whole. It has options like "strongly agree", "strongly disagree", "agree", and others.

  • Semantic differential scale questions − these are the questions in which the brands ask the respondents or the customers to rate the different attributes of the product to understand the feeling of the customer towards the brand's product and what improvements they can bring.

Segmentation helps the company a lot in creating different marketing segments and in selling as well as marketing better. It is time that businesses ace up with these mammoth data and insights to accelerate their sales and boost the image of the company.

Updated on: 11-May-2023

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