eLearning Session

After completing this chapter, you should be able top:

1. Identify role-related product constellations.
2. Describe psychographics and lifestyles research.
3. Understand the use of lifestyles data to profile segments, identify related lifestyle interests, and locate lifestyle segments geographcially.
4. Recognize lifestyle typologies such as VALS. LOVs, Japan VALS, and Global Scan.
5. Understand how lifestyle may be used at various levels of aggregation.
6. Identify the value and limitations of lifestyle research.

• The focus of this chapter is on consumers' lifestyles-that is, how consumers live.Lifestyle includes consumers' activities, interests, likes/dislikes, attitudes, consumption patterns and expectations. The term lifestyle suggests a patterned way of life into which consumers fit various products, activities and resources.
• We can trace the origins of the interest in lifestyle to the work of Thorstein Veblen's turn-of-the-century classic, The Theory of the Leisure Class, where conspicuous consumption of the nouveau riche was first identified and ridiculed. In making use of the lifestyle concept, marketers often rely on the idea that consumer lifestyles are a reflection of individual's attempts torealize a desired or ideal self-concept.
• Marketing's conception of lifestyle emerged from four main developments: 1) the desire to develop an easily measurable, more objective variant of motivational research that was popular in the 1950's and 1960's; 2) the emergence of more sophisticated statistical techniques and the computer power to run them; 3) the desire to give traditional personality research a narrower consumer focus, and 4) the inability to describe increasingly diverse consumption patterns with then existing tools (e.g., demographic or social class analysis). The concept that resulted combines the attitudinal clustering typically associated with personality research with a wider domain of person measures.
• Consumers' lifestyles influence many of their production, acquisition, consumption and disposition activities. In many cases we might think of marketers, as selling pieces of a style of life, not isolated products.
• Decisions that consumers make about purchase, consumption and disposition can alter and/or reinforce their lifestyles. Hence, lifestyles are dynamic and constantly changing.
• Lifestyles are influenced by many factors including demographics, social class, reference groups and family. Many aspects of the cultural environment can influence lifestyle. An individual's self-concept, as discussed in Chapter 7, serves as the basis for one's lifestyle. In fact, we might think of lifestyle as an outward manifestation of aspects of the self. This means that individuals, families and households may practice multiple lifestyles, depending on how situations and participants shift to alter important lifestyle dynamics. For example, many products and marketing strategies focus on an explicit recognition of a particular lifestyle that is shared by a marker segment. Lifestyle differences or lifestyle patterns constitute one of the most important bases for segmenting markets.
• Lifestyle differences might be recognized and targeted by marketers at various levels of aggregation. We might define the lifestyle characteristics of a whole generation such as generation Xers. Alternatively, we could talk about the lifestyle of a particular segment within a generation, such as the :privileged poor."
• Marketers often define a lifestyle segment around a single activity such as cycling, soccer, bowling or hiking. For example, the Football Collector ad shown below invites soccer enthusiasts to buy merchandise reflective of their favorite teams and heroes.

This Lifestyle Ad Appeals to Enthusiasts of a Particular Leisure Activity (50.0K)

• Lifestyle research can be applied to solve a variety of marketing problems, including identifying the target market, positioning a brand, locating where your target group lives, identifying how to communicate with your target group, and gaining insight into why the target group acts the way it does.
• The key for lifestyle marketers is to figure out what goes with what, and in many cases to help define product and service assortments for particular lifestyles. This often involves figuring out what attitudes and values go with what activities and products.

• Products are important for communicating social information. The "lifestyle" term implies a pattern of behavior that is reflected in and reflects the consumption not merely of single products, but of interrelated product clusters or product constellations. Product constellations are clusters of complementary products, specific brands, and/or consumption activities. Product constellations are socially meaningful sets of consumption stimuli that are used by consumers both for self-definition and for the categorization of others.
• In the late 1960s, two U.S. researchers employed product usage data concerning 80 products in an attempt to identify behavioral lifestyles. These authors also reported some evidence of distinctions between these segments and consumption of particular brands of beer. Industry Insights 8.1 shows the contents of product constellations elicited for some male social roles in the United States.
• Lifestyle profiles can be organized around a single product category. Such product category specific lifestyle profiles are the bread and butter of many marketing research firms and offer valuable insights on specific appeals and vehicles to use in targeting product category users.
• Some particularly strong product-to-role relationships have led researchers to speak of brand tribes for people who are devoted to a particular brand, such as clothes by No Fear in the U.S. or by NafNaf or Clark's in Europe. When product-to-role relationships are especially strong, the brands become a defining symbol of a commitment identify, hence the term brand tribe.
• Product constellations can be matched with demographic profiles and media preferences to improve targeting. Advertisers can use product constellations to engineer the context of ads (e.g., to indicate what other products should appear along side the advertised brand). Product constellations also have implications for store layouts. For example, merchandisers may place complementary items together rather than organize the store by product categories.
• Lifestyle profiles constructed from product constellations also have some weaknesses. Troublesome problems with the statistical procedures used to profile consumers of particular product bundles exist. If a product is too closely associated with one role that conflicts with other roles, it may not suit the consumer's needs. Further, lifestyle profiles are also insensitive to effects of potential innovations, environmental influences and changes in corporate strategy. Marketers must also avoid allowing the product constellation to become a cliché so that potential customers begin to shun it.

• Psychographics is an operational technique to measure lifestyles. Psychographics is more comprehensive than demographic, behavioral and socioeconomic measures. Using a psychographic technique involves systematically linking individual psychological factors to characteristic patterns of overt consumer behavior to determine who the market is. The basic idea is that cognitive processes or properties including values, aptitudes, beliefs and opinions affect the likelihood of groups within the market to make a particular decision about a product, person, ideology, to hold an attitude, or to use a communication medium like TV or the Internet.
• Psychographic techniques were developed in marketing to overcome the idiosyncratic and overly Freudian results of the motivational research that was developed in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Psychographic techniques divide the total market into segments based on activities, interests, values, opinions, personality characteristics, and attitudes using various statistical procedures. The term psychographic is often used interchangeably with AIO measures, or statements to describe the activities,interests and opinionsof consumers. AIO statements may be general activities and motivations or they may focus on statements that are product or brand specific. Psychographic methods might be termed backward segmentation because they group people by behavioral characteristics before seeking purchase and consumption correlates.
• To execute a psychographic analysis, prospective or actual members of a market segment are polled using standardized survey research instruments. In addition to administering these forms in person, by phone, by mail or electronically (for example, on the Web), these surveys may take the form of warranty cards, sweepstakes entries, or customer profiles. These data are then analyzed in a statistical sense to tease out various consumption typologies.
• Most of you are probably familiar with psychographic research, since many products now include lifestyle surveys with their warranty cards. Consumers are asked to mail in these cards to ensure their warranty (Good Practice 8.1). Marketers can combine the information from a warranty card with other kinds of consumer information to create a lifestyle inventory. Such an inventory could include demographic, purchase, and psychographic information.

Good Practice 8.1: The Average American Cosumer Quiz (50.0K)

• Many products, including household soap, stomach remedies and automobiles have been successfully positioned or repositioned using lifestyle segmentation. At the retail level, the restructuring of many department stores in the Triad nations into lifecycle boutiques, and the success of Nike Town or Virgin megastores that are divided into lifestyle mecas, are notable examples of the successful application of lifestyle segmentation.

• In this section we describe some widely used approaches to lifestyle marketing. Although each of these has gained rapid acceptance and widespread use, each has certain limitations. For example, marketers must be careful about the cultural assumptions they make in their use of these psychographic segmentation schemes. Sometimes these approaches can be used to identify lifestyle segments across country borders, but this requires considerable managerial judgment and expertise.

VALUES AND LIFESTYLES SYSTEMS (VALS 1).

• A team of researchers at the Stanford Research Institute (SRT) has developed several very influential values-based lifestyle segmentation schemes, widely used by firms in North Amercia. VALS 1 was based on the work of two psychologists: Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs and David Reisman's concept of social character.
• VALS 1 partitioned the market into nine groups based on Maslow's hierarchal model of human needs (from most basic physiological needs to most abstract self-actualization needs), and Reisman's model of external or internal basic goal orientations. Exhibit 8.1 compares a profile of North American and European VALS 1 segments and shows the approximate percentage of U.S. residents in each group.

  EXHIBIT 8.1 COMPARISON OF VALS 1 SEGEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE
  Image A (65.0K)
  Image B (43.0K)

  • VALS 1 enjoyed massive early success for clients as diverse as Merrill Lynch, Dr. Pepper, Clairol, and Folonari wine. By the late 1980s VALS 1 had outlived its usefulness. Among the criticisms were that the classification was too abstract and too general. In addition, their origin in development of psychology does not seem especially applicable to consumer markets. As a result, there are too many similarities between groups and too few differences among them. Given the imbalance in size between segments, the system was not useful for identifying markets.

VALUES AND LIFESTYLES SYSTEMS (VALS 2).

• In response to criticisms of VALS 1, the team at SRI developed the VALS 2 scheme that classifies people into segments based on whether they control abundant or minimal resources, and three aspects of their basic motivational self-orientations: principle, status, or action. Using the dimensions of self-orientation and resources, VALS 2 has defined eight consumer segments with differing attitudes and behavior patterns. The groups are fairly balanced, proportionately ranging from 8 percent to 16 percent of the population, so that each represents a viable consumer target. Marketers are advised to take different approaches when dealing with principle-oriented consumers versus status-or action-oriented ones. Principle-orientedpeople are guided by intellectual matters. The principle-oriented segments are labeled as Fulfilleds and Believers. Status-orientedpeoplealter their behavior to fit their surroundings to win the approval of important reference groups and individuals. The two status-oriented segments are labeled as Achievers and Strivers. One difference between these two segments is the amount of resources available, indicated by the vertical axis in Exhibit 8.2. Achievers have access to more resources than strivers, as defined by the VALS 2 framework.

Exhibit 8.2: VALS 2 Segment Profiles (50.0K)

• Action oriented people thrive on new social or physical activities. Experiences and Makers are the two segments. The resource measure indicates the ability of a particular group to respond to an appeal to buy. VALS 2 recognizes that a wide range of constraints, from financial to psychological, can prevent a person's values from having free expression in the way they live.
• People can be segmented into one of the following VALS types: Actualizers are successful, sophisticated, active, take-charge people with high self-esteem and abundant resources. They are interested in growth and seek to develop, explore, and express themselves in a variety of ways. Fulfilleds are mature, satisfied, comfortable, reflective people who value order, knowledge, and responsibility. Most are well educated and in (or recently retired from) professional occupations. They are will informed about world and national events and are alert to opportunities to broaden their knowledge.

Achievers are successful career and work-oriented people who like to, and generally do, feel in control of their lives. They value consensus, predictability, and stability over risk, intimacy, and self-discovery. They are deeply committed to work and family.

Experiencers are young, vital, enthusiastic, impulsive, and rebellious. They seek variety and excitement, savoring the new, the offbeat, and the risky. Still in the process of formulating life values and patterns of behavior, they quickly become enthusiastic about new possibilities but are equally quick to cool. At this stage they are politically uncommitted, uninformed, and highly ambivalent about what they believe.

Believers are conservative, conventional people with concrete beliefs based on traditional, established codes: family, church, community, and the nation. Many believers express moral codes that are deeply rooted and literally interpreted. They follow established routines, organized in large part around home, family, and social and religious organizations to which they belong.

Strivers seek motivation, self-definition, and approval from the world around them. They are striving to find a secure place in life. Unsure of themselves and low on economic, social, and psychological resources, strivers are concerned about the opinions and approval of others.

Makers are practical people who have constructive skills and value self-sufficiency. They live within a traditional context of family, practical work, and physical recreation and have little interest in what lies outside that context. Makers are experience the world by working on it-building a house, raising children, fixing a car, or canning vegetables-and have enough skill, income, and energy to carry out their projects.

Strugglers live in constricted life's. Chronically poor, ill educated, low skilled, without strong social bonds, elderly, and concerned about their health, they are often resigned and passive. Because they are limited by the need to meet the urgent needs of the present moment, they do not show a strong self-orientation. Their chief concerns are for security and safety.

• If you go to the website and take the survey yourself, you will find that you will be segmented into one of the following VALS types: actualizers, fulfilleds, achievers, experiencers, believers, strivers, makers, and strugglers. Actualizers are the highest in terms of resources. Strugglers are the lowest.
• Some problems with the survey may include the wording of the questions and the lack of a neutral response. Most questions are worded in such a way that respondents may choose an answer that is socially desirable rather than one that is strictly honest.
• Other problems with the survey have been identified by Douglas Holt. According to Holt, segmenting people according to their values and lifestyle will give researchers some idea of that they consume, but how they consume will still be missing. Thus, it is important to take into account the context of consumption in order to understand the segments. Ethnographic research provides a way to understand various contexts, including in-depth interviews about how people use the products and services that they buy. In contrast, psychographics relies upon a personality or values-based approach, where consumption patterns are identified for categories of goods owned and activities pursued. For instance, by administrating a survey, it is discovered that Achievers tend to own patio furniture at a higher than average rate. Patio furniture is assumed to express the Achiever lifestyle regardless of how it is understood and used by the actual consumers.
• Like VAL 1, VALS 2 clarifies understanding of consumer segments for targeted marketing. As a first step, marketers might identify the light, heavy, and non-using segments of the product category in question. For example, Industry Insights 8.3 compares pain reliever users by VALS 2 segements.

Industry Insights 8.3: Pain Reliever Use by Vals 2 Type (50.0K)

• The VALS systems have been used to segment markets and to target new product introductions. For each group one may define key product constellations as well as appropriate communication styles, media communication, and particular elements of the marketing mix to emphasize.

• SRI has recently extended the VALS system to Japan. Like VALS 2 its typologies are based on product usage and behavior as well as attitudes.
• The Japan VALS identifies leaders of change and their relationship to emerging social trends. Japan VALS identifies four important dimensions:

Exploration-an individual's active involvement and motivation to master new challenge.

Self-Expression-sociable, enjoys sports, and impulsive shoppers.

Achievement-career, status, leadership, and culture.

Tradition-stability, order, community, and traditional beliefs.

Realists-follow a reactive orientation to life; relatively unconcerned with self-improvement or fashion.

• The exploration and life orientation dimensions are statistically designed to predict activity with regard to innovation, consumption, production and social control or mediation. Four main groups - change leaders, adapters, followers, and change resisters, divided into ten standard segments, emerge from the VALS Japan analysis. The Japan VALS analysis and characteristics of the groups are shown in Exhibit 8.4.

Exhibit 8.4: Japan VALS Segments (50.0K)

• In addition to the standard segmentation, Japan VALS defines three other levels of analysis that allow subscribers to focus on specific industry markets, niche segments for specific products and market opportunities, and international comparisons.
• Understanding pressures experienced in different cultures can translate into market opportunities. For example, U.S. strivers want fun, stylish, fast, good value cars. Japanese strivers consider their car like an extra room and will spend to add lace curtains or expensive stereos to them. A value appeal that might work well with a U.S. striver would be lost on a Japanese striver.

• An alternative to the VALS scheme is the List of Values (LOVs) approach developed at the University of Michigan. LOV aims to assess adaptation to various roles through value fulfillment. People's dominant values are identified from a list of nine, including self-respect, sense of belonging, being well respected, fun and enjoyment in life, and excitement.
• Research on LOVs has found a significant number of predicted relationships between LOV and various criterion variables such as participation in certain (commercially available) activities, such as skiing, backpacking, camping, etc., and consumption of certain products.
• Certain LOVs values are associated with the values identified in VALS such as an inner- or outward orientation, self-fulfillment, and accomplishment. Unlike VALS, there is no implicit evaluative dimension in LOVs such as the developmental contrast between marginal survivors and wealthy, healthy integrateds.

• Another useful way of anticipating lifestyle trends is to understand the power of cohorts. In lifestyle terms, an age cohort is the group of people born over a relatively short and contiguous time period that are deeply influenced and bound together by the events of their formative years.
• Events that happen when people first come of age create habits and attitudes that often last a lifetime and influence future attitudes and behaviors toward savings, sex, a good meal, musical preferences, and products and service preferences.
• Understanding cohort effects can improve predictions about changing lifestyles are sensitizing marketers to how generations will age differently than they have in the past. Over the past 40 years, coffee consumption has raisen with age, while cola consumption has declined with age. Also, obs the number of 18 to 34 year olds declined by 4 million in the 1990's while the number of older adults grew by 24 million. This might on the surface suggest that demand for coffee will increase while demand for cola declines. However, this is based on a crucial premise that historic consumption rates by a particular group will prevail in the future. A cohort analysis might instead suggest that younger, cola-intensive cohorts will continue to consume soft drinks even as they age. Meanwhile, older, coffee-intensive groups will age and move out of the marketplace. Baby boomers and other lower-consuming cohorts will replace them. This trend indicates that despite an aging population, demand for cola will not decline, (e.g., the reverse effect).

• For a variety of reasons, consumer culture varies geographically or by region. These reasons include climate and topography, ethnic history, the distribution of jobs and industries for example. By now we are all familiar with the regional differences that divide many countries politically as well. The point here is that lifestyle marketing needs to take regional variations into account.
• Regional differences affect consumption.
• A number of lifestyle segmentation systems have been developed to take regional lifestyles into account. Take, for example, the nine nations of North America. North America, excluding Quebec, has been divided into "nations" according to differences in cultural value orientations and lifestyles. Exhibit 8.6 summarizes these differences.

Exhibit 8.6: Psychographic Differences Between the Regional Nations of North America (50.0K)

• Because of intra-cultural variation other factors must be taken into account in explaining individual consumer behaviors.

• PRIZM is alifestyle segmentation system that deals with regionallifestyles at a micro level. It is based on the principle that people with similar lifestyles tend to live near one another. As the familiar saying predicts, "birds of a feather flock together." Claritas, Inc., -- a market research firm in Arlington, Virginia, originally created PRIZM over 20 years ago. It describes every U.S. neighborhood in terms of 62 distinct clusters, based on census data, consumer surveys, and other methods.
• PRIZMis useful for marketers because it can identify groups of consumers who perform at or above average levels for product purchases. PRIZM identifies neighborhoods where existing customers live, and it can be used to predict where prospective customers are likely to be found. The reports generated by PRIZM can be used to answer such questions as: Who are my targets? What are they like (e.g., in terms of demographics)? Where can I find them? For instance, PRIZM software can be used to create prospect lists for direct-mail campaigns, or it could be used to suggest media vehicles (e.g., magazines) for an ad campaign.
• PRIZM data can be accessed via zip codes. Each zip code may contain many clusters. Go to the Claritas website and look up your own zip code to learn more about the PRIZM system of lifestyle segmentation.

yawyl.claritas.com

• Another very important focus for lifestyle and psychographic research is to provide general insights into emerging social trends and evolving lifestyles. Identifying lifestyle trends is one of the most difficult applications of psychographic research, and yet, it is perhaps one of the most vital. Lifestyle trends are triggered by major demographic shifts such as: Japanese women entering the workforce, U.S. women having babies later in life and returning to work sooner, or U.S. baby-boomers aging. But lifestyle trends are also triggered by important attitudinal shifts such as European consumers' growing commitment to organic food or the casual dress trend in Corporate America. Lifestyle trends such as these affect the lives and welfare of numerous industries and can be decisive for many products and services. Successful strategic planning relies on identifying these trends early and separating out trends from fads.
• A subtle lifestyle shift that has important implications for clothes makers is the trend toward dressing down in Corporate America. A recent study revealed that almost 90% of U.S. workers are dressing down at least some of the time. The "casual Friday" trend has created an important growth in "corporate casual" clothing.
• Sometimes a single person can personify a lifestyle. One example in the U.S. of such a person is Martha Stewart, a woman who has created an empire to promote her ideas about a style of elegant living. She is viewed as the "ultimate homemaker," and she strives to teach the masses how to create "the good life." Martha Stewart sees herself as a purveyor of information. In brief, Martha Stewart lifestyle represents investing a large amount of time adding ornamentation to life, especially in the areas of cooking, home décor, design, gift-giving, celebrations (e.g., weddings), and parties. As with any trend, there is a counter trend. For instance, detractors say her name has become synonymous with an unobtainable and slightly ridiculous standard in the domestic arts. Some U.S. consumers put out a welcome mat that says, "Martha Stewart doesn't live here."

• Lifestyle segmentation schemes are popular worldwide. National and international schemes have been developed in all major European countries and for European consumers as a whole.

• Backer Spielvogel & Bates Worldwide (BSB) has created Global Scan,an evolving psychographic segmentation scheme including at least eighteen countries, (mostly Triad and Pacific Rim countries). Global Scan measures a wide variety of attitudes and consumer values, as well as media use, and buying patterns. Repeat surveys are conducted annually in each country to ensure the model remains reflective of the population. Both higher values like self-sufficiency and self-esteem and personality characteristics are included in the survey, as are political opinions and attitudes about social issues. To improve applicability, consumers are questioned directly on their use of more than 1000 brands and products.
• BSB claims 95 percent of the combined population of all countries surveyed can be assigned to five segments. These segments are adapters (18%), traditionals (16%), pressureds (13%), achievers (22%), and strivers (26%). A three-country comparison is shown I Industry Insights 8.6. As can be seen from the diagram, the five general groups are found in varying proportions in the countries studied.

Industry Insights 8, (50.0K)

• Global Scan allows .6: Global Scan Segments in Three Countriesmarketers to identify cross-culture and local differences. Canadian Strivers are more open-minded and liberal than their U.S. counterparts, but they are also more materialistic, ambitious, optimistic and risk-taking. Canadian Achievers, the affluent opinion leader segment, enjoy one of the highest-quality lifestyles of any country surveyed. The Pressured segment, those with familial and financial worries, are found in greater proportion in Quebec than in any other Canadian province.
• In the next section, we briefly present examples of lifestyle segments that exist in three countries: Turkey, New Zealand, and China. It is interesting to note how these lifestyle segments differ across the three nations and how they differ from lifestyle segments, which have been identified in the U.S. (e.g., VALS 2). These three countries are discussed because recent lifestyle research has been completed there and because they represent regions where lifestyles are likely to be quite different from those discussed in traditional schemes (e.g., VALS).

• In a recent study, three lifestyle segments were identified for Turkish consumers. The first segment is labeled as "Liberals/Trend Setters." These consumers are somewhat similar to those in western nations. They are mostly college educated and high-income earners. Important characteristics for these consumers include quality, workmanship, prestigious brand name and style. Price is not especially important to this group.
• The second and third clusters are labeled: "Moderates/Survivors" and "Traditionalist/Conservative." A major difference between clusters two and three is that the former contains mostly males. Group three contains many females, but male family members make key purchase decisions (e.g., automobiles). Prestige and style are not so important. Price is very important. As a whole, the traditionalist segment does not have a favorable attitude toward imported western products, in contrast to the relatively positive attitudes of the Liberal/Trend Setters.

• In a 1998 study of 3,773 New Zealanders, six major segments were identified. These include: Active Family Values People, Conservative Quiet Lifers, Educated Liberals, Accepting Mid-Lifers, Success-driven Extroverts, Pragmatic Strugglers, and Social Strivers. Some of the segments have parallels in VALS 2. For instance, the Pragmatic Strugglers are somewhat like the Strugglers in VALS 2, but this group also shares something in common with the VALS' Makers. As the name implies, the Strivers and the Social Strivers are similar. The VALS' Achievers and the New Zealand Extroverts share common characteristics.
• The accepting mid-lifers is one group that doesn't have a clear counterpart in the VALS 2 classification system. The mid-lifers are generally accepting of their lives and of society. They lack a strong feeling regarding political and social issues. They like things as they are and are not so willing to try new things (e.g., new brands or products). Mid-lifers don't receive much enjoyment from shopping. At the same time, they are not very brand loyal. They are likely to use credit cards and purchase items such as videocassette recorders, compact disc players, and more than one television. The New Zealand study illustrates the value of combining psychological variables (e.g., novelty seeking) with marketing information (e.g., data about purchase of specific brands or products).

• A segmentation study for females living in greater China was completed in 1998. Greater China is defined as residents of three different countries: People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. A total of four segments was identified for females between the ages of 18 and 35: Conventional Women (40.7% of the population), Contemporary Females (21.9%), Searching Singles (19.4%), and Followers (18.1%). Each of these segments is discussed here, with the purpose of contrasting these segments to those identified in other countries. In addition, selected marketing management implications are highlighted.
• It is interesting to note that the Conventional segment corresponds somewhat to the Traditionalist/Conservative segment identified in Turkey. Conventional women are proud of having a close-knit family and they consider family to be the most important aspect of their life. In terms of recreation, they are "indoor types" and prefer reading newspapers and books or watching television.
• Contemporary women share some characteristics in common with conventional women, especially with regard to the importance of family. However, this group believes that work is also important, and they try to combine family and work into their lifestyle. Unlike the Conventional, this group is likely to voice a complaint when they are dissatisfied with a product or service. They are very concerned about their appearance and prefer imported and branded products.
• Searching singles have more progressive ideas about the role of women in society. For instance, they are more career oriented and they postpone marriage longer. Females in this group like to go shopping and are concerned with the image of the store where they shop. They are especially influenced by sales announcements and the image of the brand. Also, they are heavy users of fast food and entertainment services.
• Women in the fourth and final segment, followers, are not very active in social, cultural, or other physical activities. They don't make as make shopping trips as those in some of the other groups. More than half of them are single and they have achieved relatively low levels in both education and income. Followers lack confidence and are somewhat uncertain about the future. Consequently, they like to seek advice from salespeople about the products they buy.
• In general, the Chinese segments do not share much in common with the segments identified in New Zealand. The New Zealand segments are more like those that might be found in a European or North American country. The Chinese segments are more similar to those found in Turkey. This makes sense in that China and Turkey are both developing nations, and both have a culture that sometimes clashes with consumption values as they are represented in the Triad Nations.

• It is important to note the criticisms of lifestyle research. These criticisms warn of over-enthusiastic use of psychographic data and point out challenges for future marketing research.
• First, there is a general conceptual problem. The central concepts (i.e., lifestyles, psychographics, and AIO research) tend to be ill defined. Also, it is not always clear why particular segments express particular consumer preferences. Predictions of emerging patterns are especially difficult.
• Second, there is a problem associated with the secret, often ad hoc, nature of the methods used to develop lifestyle schemes. To what extent are lifestyle segments stable over time? Current lifestyle measures are not very good at capturing the fluidity of lifestyle segment membership. That is, people are likely to change lifestyle segments over time.
• Finally, there tends to be a fairly low level of correlation between lifestyle segments and particular behaviors such as brand choice that are of great interest to many companies. The consumption of many low-involvement products may not be closely related to lifestyle variables.