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“If you don’t create your reality, your reality will create you.”
Introduction
Marketing gurus define segmentation to be the process of dividing a potential market into distinct subsets of consumers with distinct needs and characteristics and selecting one or more segments to target with a distinct marketing mix. The necessary conditions for successful segmentation are:
a large population
-with sufficient money to spend
-and sufficient diversity
-to be capable of being partitioned
Segmentation studies are designed to discover the needs and wants of specific groups of consumers so that specialised goods and services can be developed and promoted to satisfy each group's needs. They are also used to guide the redesign and repositioning of existing products. Often the basis for a repositioning strategy has been the identification of a new market segment.
Why VALS?
Segmentation models are based on Demographics, Geo-demographics, SEC data & Benefits and usage. However, these models are still inadequate in their description & analysis of a person since they generate only isolated fragments.
This is where Values And Lifestyles segmentation plays such a pivotal role. Because lifestyle characteristics and values provide a rich view of the market and a more lifelike portrait of the consumer, they meet the demands of management practice for increasingly sophisticated and actionable marketing information. The basic premise here is therefore - the more you know and understand about your customer the more effectively you can communicate and market to him.
Values And Lifestyles
A Value refers to a single belief that transcends any particular object, in contrast to an attitude, which refers to beliefs regarding a specific object or situation.
Values are more stable and occupy a more central position in a person's cognitive system.
Values are determinants of attitudes and behavior and provide a stable and inner oriented understanding of consumers.
Values within a system refer to a wide array of individual beliefs, hopes, desires, aspirations, prejudices etc.
Values provide potentially powerful explanations of human behavior as they serve as standards or criteria of conduct.
These tend to be limited in number & are remarkably consistent over time. The value construct can therefore be used to segment the population into homogenous groups of individuals who share a common value system.
A lifestyle is a distinctive mode of living in its aggregate and broadest sense. They deal with everyday behaviorally oriented facets of people as well as their feelings, attitudes, interests & opinions. It embodies the patterns that develop and emerge from the dynamics of living in a society.
Value and Lifestyle segmentation unlike traditional segmentation begins with people instead of products and classifies them into different types, each characterised by a unique style of living - it then determines how marketing factors fit into their lives. This perspective provides a three-dimensional view of the target consumer.
The Inception And Evolution Of VALS.
VALS is a relatively new concept, pioneered by SRI International, a Management Consulting firm in California that conducted a nationwide survey of the US consumers based on values and lifestyles first in 1979.
This model was later modified in 1989 and renamed VALS-II which segmented the American consumers into 8 consumer profiles.
Some of the uses to which Values and Lifestyles segmentation has been put are:
To identify whom to target and find niche markets much more easily.
To locate where concentrations of your target group lives.
To gain insight into why the target group acts the way it does.
To improve and introduce products that speak to customers' values.
To target marketing and advertising campaigns much more effectively and much more accurately.
To position products much more accurately in the marketplace.
The Objective Of This Paper
The objective of this study has been to design a model that would enable us to segment the Indian consumers on the basis of Values and Lifestyles.
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