Psychographics is an important concept for product managers to understand. In essence, psychographics looks beyond basic demographics like age, gender, location, etc., and instead tries to understand the psychological attributes that drive consumer behavior. This includes things like attitudes, interests, opinions, values, lifestyles, and more.
By having a deeper understanding of the motivations and drivers behind why consumers make certain product choices, product managers can create more resonant product experiences. They can also segment and target customers more effectively.
This Psychographics For Product Managers beginners’ guide will cover the key things any Product Managers needs to know in order to start leveraging psychographics, including:
- What are psychographics?
- Key psychographic segments
- How to conduct psychographic research
- Tips for integrating psychographics into product development
- Pitfalls to avoid
What Are Psychographics?
The term “psychographics” was first coined in the late 1960s by researcher and consultant Emanuel Demby. He defined psychographics as quantitative research intended to place consumers on psychological dimensions.
In simpler terms, while demographics look at “what” people are, psychographics try to look at “who” people are. Some key characteristics it tries to measure include:
- Attitudes – What opinions do customers have about different subjects? What is their worldview?
- Interests – What activities, subjects, genres, etc. do customers find interesting?
- Opinions – What do customers think about major issues or brands? How strongly do customers hold these opinions?
- Values – What guiding principles or priorities influence customer behavior and decision-making?
- Lifestyles – How do the customers’ attitudes, interests, opinions, and values manifest in how they live their lives and spend their time?
By developing quantitative frameworks to measure attributes like these, brands can go beyond shallow demographics and start understanding motivational factors behind consumer actions. This is powerful in determining product fit.
Some key benefits for product managers include:
- Identify market niches that share psychographic traits conducive to product adoption
- Creating more targeted and effective buyer personas based on psychographics
- Optimizing marketing messaging to resonate better with target psychographic segments
- Prioritizing product features based on the attitudes, interests and values of your best customer segments
- Developing a deeper understanding of customers everyday lives to create better solutions
So in summary, while demographics only provide a surface level understanding of customers, psychographics give critical insights into why customers make certain choices. This is invaluable to crafting winning product strategies.
Key Psychographic Profiles
There are many frameworks used to classify consumers under psychographic profiles. Probably the most widely used one in marketing though is the VALS (Values and Lifestyles) framework developed by SRI International.
Under VALS, there are 9 major psychographic segments of US adult consumers as summarised below:
- Innovators – Successful, sophisticated, take risks. They are the ones who try new products and services first.
- Thinkers – Mature, satisfied, intellectual. They have high incomes but are not as experimental as innovators.
- Achievers – Successful, career and family-focused. They favor established brands and products.
- Experiencers – Young, enthusiastic, impulsive consumers. They seek variety, and excitement and take risks.
- Believers – Traditional, conventional people with concrete beliefs. They favor familiar products and known brands.
- Strivers – Trend followers who lack resources. They favor fashionable affordable products that emulate the rich.
- Makers – Practical people who value self-sufficiency. They prefer durable products they can craft or repair themselves.
- Survivors – Oldest consumer group, with fixed incomes and concerns about health. They use established brands and products seen as necessities.
- Unclassified – A residual for people who cannot be classified in a clear category.
This VALS framework gives product managers a simple model to categorize current and potential customers under distinct psychographic profiles most relevant to their product.
By determining which segments best fit the product’s sweet spot for adoption, they can then research deeper into that group’s attitudes, values, and consumer behavior patterns. This allows for finely tuned buyer personas and product positioning optimized for the target psychographic cluster.
How to Conduct Psychographic Research
To leverage psychographics effectively, product managers need to invest in researching target users in-depth across psychological attributes. Here are some key ways psychographic research can be conducted:
- Surveys – Well-designed surveys with rating scales and open-ended questions can reveal much user insight on attitudes, interests, opinions, values, lifestyle factors, and more. Just ensure questions probe beneath the surface on psychological drivers rather than just ask about functional preferences.
- Focus groups – Well-run focus groups centered around psychographic questioning allow product teams to rapidly ideate why different customer groups feel, think, and act differently to uncover related user needs.
- Social listening – Broad-based social listening across social networks, forums, and major sites using psychographic interest and values keywords can highlight differential attitudes between customer clusters allowing for segmentation.
- Ethnographic research – Embedded ethnographic research tracking different consumer groups in their natural life habitats allows direct observation of how psychographic profile affects consumer behavior, pain points, and needs.
- Data analysis – Secondary analysis of brand existing user data may reveal psychographic patterns related to differing user behavior between best and poor customers for indicators worth investigating.
Armed with insights from a multi-faceted psychographic research plan encompassing surveys, focus groups, social data, ethnography, and past user analytics – product managers can build comprehensive psychographic user profiles. The best practice is condensing research into 3-5 core profiles along with value types, motivations, interests, communication preferences, usage contexts, etc. to inform product decisions.
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Integrating Psychographics into Product Development
There are many ways for product managers to apply psychographic insights across key product development processes including:
- Personas – Map psychographic factors like values, interests, and opinions to persona frameworks detailing user behaviors and product needs for precise targeting.
- Roadmaps – Validate product themes and features against psychological drivers uncovered through research to ensure product vision resonates with target psychographic clusters.
- Content – Craft marketing copy, ad creatives, and in-product messaging that connects to motivational triggers within priority psychographic segments for superior engagement.
- Features – Determine feature importance through the lens of differentiated attitudes, lifestyle factors, and motivations of key user groups based on psychographics.
- Pricing – Price and package products and services based on disposable income, willingness to pay, and spending triggers of target psychographic profiles.
- Partnerships – Pursue cross-promo partnerships with brands catering to aligned psychographic groups to extend reach through psychographic symbiosis.
- Positioning – Shape core brand and product positioning to tap into the foremost emotional, social, and psychological needs of priority psychographic niches.
Follow best practices like these in wielding psychographic insights and product teams can craft tailored product experiences resonating deeply with the core motivations of target users.
Pitfalls to Avoid
While psychographics is clearly an invaluable tool, product managers need to steer clear of the following pitfalls to leverage it effectively and ethically:
- Stereotyping – Avoid simplistic stereotyping by basing psychographic profiles on rigorous, objective research free from personal bias.
- Privacy issues – Be extremely sensitive to how deep user data is collected and stored to protect user privacy as a priority.
- Segment narrowness – Psychographic segments that get too niche may lack scalability and commercial viability over the long run.
- Compatibility issues – Ensure selected psychographic groups align well with brand values and business objectives for consistency.
- Psychographic fluidity – Appreciate psychographics can shift over time requiring periodic validations so profiles stay relevant.
Avoid these missteps in applying psychographics and focus on evidenced, ethical, and commercially grounded usage – that strikes the right balance.
Conclusion
This has just been a high-level overview of key fundamentals product managers need to unlock value from psychographics. By studying the motivations behind user actions, product teams get the blueprint to build products and experiences perfectly in tune with the deepest needs of customers.
What science shows is demographic factors may determine the reach for brands, but psychographic factors determine resonance and loyalty – critical to sustainable commercial success. This makes precise psychographic targeting an invaluable framework for product managers to deeply know customers, customize buyer journeys, and maximize product market fit.
Hope this beginner’s guide on Psychographics Product Managers has provided a clear primer for product professionals on what psychographics is, why it matters, and how to integrate it into development – benefiting customers, products, and companies.
Psychographics Product Managers – References:
1) Yankelovich, Daniel; Meer, David (February 2006). “Rediscovering Market Segmentation”. Harvard Business Review. 84 (2): 122–131.
2) Lynn Roker, The VALS Story, From Data to Wisdom: Pathways to Successful Consumer Insights (2017).
3) Kim, Angella J.; Yoon Duk Kim,; Sin, Ye Han; Kiousis, Spiro; Han, Min Wha (2019). “Psychographic characteristics of protest participants: intelligence, extraversion, openness, and zealotry of the convert”. Public Relations Review. 45 (1): 131–139. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2018.10.002
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