Psychographics - Definition & Meaning
What is Psychographics?
Psychographics is the study of personality, attitudes, values, interests, habits, hobbies, lifestyle and opinion. Just like demographics which have more objective variables to measure, psychographics is difficult to measure and vary a lot even within a specific area. These are difficult to measure and are generally companies use proxy variables in order to determine the interests of people.
Psychographics can also be used to segment the customers, i.e. psychographic segmentation, other than demographics which is quite prevalent in the industry, while a combination of the two helps in better understanding of the customers rather than use of any one of them. Psychographics helps in devising better product development and marketing for the products and services.
While demographics consisted of information regarding gender, age, marital status, income, educational levels, etc., psychographics deal with attitude towards life (healthy or erratic lifestyle), looks (concerned with appearance), food (prefers junk food to a nutritious meal), appreciates art (buys artefacts and collectibles), etc. The demographic information is more readily available while companies really need to put a lot of effort in order to get information regarding psychographic information of customers or potential customers.
Methods to get psychographic information:
1) Proxy variables: Using the information available in the public space or through customer behavior to devise factors to determine particular interests, e.g. women buying men clothes might represent her as the decision maker or principle spender in the family
2) Forms or questionnaires: Getting customer information using the mentioned means by asking questions which might help in determining their attitude towards a particular thing, e.g. a survey said people are willing to pay more for consumable goods made from organic constituents
3) Social media analytics: By analysing social media information of present customers or the public can help understanding their psyche and devise particular products to meet their needs or servicing their needs better.
4) Outsourcing: Various third party organisation rent out service to observe shopping videos and tail customers to determine their buying behaviour using actual personnel or computer software
Hence, this concludes the definition of Psychographics along with its overview.
This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.
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