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Marketing: Lifestyles (Psychographics)

Searching for Lifestyle (Psychographic) Information

Students doing marketing research often need lifestyle (aka psychographic) information, i.e. information about consumer's product preferences and recreational activities, usually in a specific geographical area.  The Auraria Library has a number of Marketing Databases, all of which can be found on our Database List, and many of these can provide that kind of information (along with many other kinds of marketing data, such as Demographics).  See below for the names of 2 databases from that list that are especially good for lifestyle searches, Claritas 360 (for U.S. marketing) and Passport (for international marketing)!  However, these databases can be difficult to understand and search, so instructions are below how how to use them.  The examples below show you how to do a lifestyle search in Claritas 360 and Passport, but only for one kind of product.  If you choose to do another kind of lifestyle search in these databases, i.e. to search for something else, somewhere else, just change the product and geographical indicators in each database (which are indicated below).  NOTE: for more psychographic resources see the Demographic tab above!   

Claritas 360 (through SRDS)

HOW TO SEARCH:

In this example, we'll look for information on "Bud Light" drinkers in Denver County.  Click on the SRDS link above, then CLICK ON THE ITEMS IN BOLD BELOW, which you’ll find in that database, and do so in the following order:

  1. Claritas 360
  2. Log into Claritas 360
  3. Reports
  4. Segmentation Reports
  5. Lifestyler Reports
  6. Market Potential
  7. Under “Select Segmentation Systems”, click on Prizm Premier (if it isn’t already activated!).
  8. Under “Select a Base”, click on Households (Zip +4) (if it isn’t already activated!).
  9. Next
  10. Claritas Profiles
  11. Claritas Consumer Profiles
  12. Alcohol
  13. Domestic Light Beer Drank Past 30 Days Bud-Light
  14. Next
  15. At this point you’ll need to pick a geographical area. You can select data from the whole U.S., one or more states, one or more Designated Market Areas (i.e. metropolitan areas), and/or one or more counties.  In this case, we'll pick a county.
  16. County
  17. Within State
  18. Colorado
  19. Denver County
  20. Next
  21. On the following “Include Parent Geographies” page, leave defaults as is.  Don't change anything!
  22. Submit
  23. Wait for the report to load.  It will give you a number of options to select, but just ignore them!  Just wait for the report to load.
  24. Report Output: Excel
  25. Excel spreadsheet
  26. Table View tab – Under this tab you’ll find a table showing Bud Lite Consumption in the last 30 days for every county in Colorado.  You’ll have to select Denver County from that list.
    • How to decipher the columns in Table View:
      • Base Count - total number of adults in that market.  Example: there are 323,013 adults in Denver County.
      • Base % Comp - percentage of households in the selected geography compared to the total number of households in the base geography.  Example: Denver County (i.e. the selected geography) makes up 14.19% of the households in the Denver Designated Market Area (i.e. the base geography).  NOTE – In some cases, depending on the search you do, the selected geography and the base geography will be the same thing, in which case the percentage will be 100!
      • Estimated users – number of people in the selected geography consuming the product in question.  Example: 70,375 people in Denver County drank Bud Lite within the last 30 days.
      • % Comp - percentage of estimated users in selected geography compared to the total number of estimated users in the base geography. Example: Out of the Bud Lite drinkers in the last 30 days located in the Denver Designated Market Area, 13.7% are located in Denver County.  NOTE – In some cases, depending on the search you do, the selected geography and the base geography will be the same thing, in which case the percentage will be 100!
      • Users/100 HHs - proportion of households/adults that have the profile behavior compared to the total households in the selected geography. Example: out of every 100 households in Denver County, there are an estimated 21.79 households that have drunk Bud Lite in the last 30 days.
      • Market Potential Index – how the geographical area selected compares with the national average (which is 100).  A number above 120 or below 80 is statistically significant for purposes of comparison.  Example: the Market Potential Index (MPI) for Denver County is 99, meaning the consumption of Bud Lite in the last 30 days is just slightly below the national average, which is 100.  Summit County’s Bud Lite consumption in the last 30 days, on the other hand, with an MPI of 138, (which, of course, is above 120) is well above the national average (go to the bottom of the table to find Summit County).

This database can be used to search for all kinds of marketing information, not just lifestyles, so if you'd like more information on how to use it please go to these instructions.

Passport

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HOW TO SEARCH:
In this example, we'll look for expenditures in Belgium on household and domestic services.  Click on the Passport link above, then on the "Accept" button on the following page, and finally on THE ITEMS IN BOLD BELOW (which you’ll find in that database) in the following order:
 
1.  Click on the Consumers tab, then select Income and Expenditures.
2.  Scroll down the left-hand side of the page to the "Search Statistics" box, click on the Pull Down Menu there, and select Consumer Expenditure by Category.
3. On the following page, go to the "Consumer Expenditure by Category" box on the left-hand side of the page, and click on the > there.
4. You'll see several options.  Find "Consumer Expenditure on Household Goods and Services", and click on the > there.
5. On the following page, find "Consumer Expenditure on Household and Domestic Services" (to find out what household and domestic services include, click on the i in the box), and then click on the white box next to it .
6. Go to the "Western Europe" box on the following page, and click on the > there.
7. On the following page, go to the "Belgium" box, and click on the white box next to it.  Then click on the Search button in the upper right-hand corner.
8. Click on the View Full Data Set box in the center of the following page.
The table on the following page will show you the expenditure in Belgium on this category of goods and services per year for the last 5 years.  See the "Unit" box in that table to see what currency these expenditures are in (with this example, they will be in millions of Euros).