Psychographic sampling - a new approach for online research?

Pete Cape

Psychographic segmentation has been known to be effective for four decades, but remains underused. This is because of a lack of universality (psychological variables are largely formed by culture, which can vary at quite local levels); the fact that most systems are proprietary (which means that one does not know the relevant questions for identifying psychographic groupings); and problems of applicability (most systems are designed with a specific purpose in mind, which will not cross easily to other categories).

Psychographic sampling – a new approach for online research?

Pete Cape

Psychographic segmentation is not new: it has been in and out of vogue for at least the past 40 years. In many instances the driving force behind the use of psychographics has been the advertising industry, as it struggled to get beyond simple demographic classifications when pitching lifestyle-targeted advertising. Ruth Ziff (of Benton and Bowles, Inc. as it was then), writing in the Journal of Advertising Researchin 1971, put it succinctly: 'important demographic distinctions simply do not exist in many product categories and even when they do...

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