"Psychographics." It sounds like the doodles you made with Spiro-Graph kits when you were a kid. But it's actually a proven scientific method for segmenting the population into distinct groups of personality types - and identifying potential consumers for your healthcare product, message or service.
Sometimes referred to as the "new demographics," psychographic segmentation goes beyond traditional demographic research.
What's the difference? Traditional demographics may identify the age, gender, income, and geographical location of a marketer's consumer base, but psychographics explains what makes consumers really tick - what products they buy, which media interests them, and what kind of activities they engage in.
"Psychographic segmentation tells us why consumers prefer these things," said John Garrett of SRI Consulting in Menlo Park, Ca. Garrett, SRI's director of marketing, created the Values and Lifestyles (VALS) program nearly 20 years ago to provide clients in a variety of fields with psycho-behavioral profiles, or "segments," of American consumers in order to find out who's really interested in their products and services.
The VALS system has been used to successfully market everything from cars and coffins to blood pressure medicine and hospital services.
Once you identify the segments of the population most interested in what you are marketing, Garrett said, "you can communicate to them in a way that's more meaningful, using the media they know best."
There are several psychographic segmentation systems available commercially to marketers and each functions in a similar manner. Based on statistics found in the US Census and in demographic data provided by Simmons Market Research and other sources, firms specializing in psychographic analysis ask thousands of respondents to answer detailed surveys about their habits, attitudes and values.
"Our questionnaire is only sent to people over the age of 18," said Garrett. "We find individuals keep the values they have developed by that age for the rest of their lives."
Each of the available psychographic systems adopt their own terms for the individual segments which define the population behaviorally. The VALS program, for example, identifies eight distinct segments with catchy names such as "Believers" and "Fullfilleds," which also happen to be the two consumer segments most open to information about how to improve their health.
Believers, according to VALS literature, "are conservative, conventional people with concrete beliefs based on traditional, established codes: family, church, community, and the nation... they are predictable consumers, favoring American products and established brands."
Though some marketing experts are reluctant to use a research methodology that better understands the mindset of consumers than traditional demographic data, many in healthcare have found considerable success in selling their product or services once they have clearly identified, with the aid of psychographic surveys, those most likely to be interested in their wares.
Bob Rueff, a Minneapolis advertising executive, is a longtime subscriber to the VALS system - a $25,000 per year resource that he insists is "tremendously cost-effective."
Representing North Memorial Hospital in 1993, Rueff wanted to identify the population segment in Minneapolis that would be most open to information about cosmetic surgery. Using the VALS database and consulting services Rueff was able to separate those who were happy with the looks they were born with from those who felt "if something's not right - go fix it." He tailored his print ad campaign accordingly, which featured a white, upper-middle class family with ears the size of their own heads. The caption read: "Not Everything You Inherit Is Good." The result? The hospital was so booked up for cosmetic surgery they had to pull the ad.
Steps for Conducting Psychographic Surveys
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In recent years, even such public health stalwarts as the American Cancer Society and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have taken to the idea of using psychographic profiling to identify those segments of the American population which are actively interested in improving their health and are therefore receptive to health promotion or ad campaigns which attempt to educate and improve quality of life.
The CDC began looking into using psychographic research in March 1995, when they began their Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative, with the objective of getting Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables. They turned to Washington, D.C., public relations firm Porter Novelli, which offered the CDC the opportunity to help create their health-specific "Healthstyles" psychographic questionnaire, sent to those who respond to the broader psycho-behavioral surveys conducted by sister company DDB Needham.
"CDC got excited about the health focused survey we were going to conduct," said Kelly Ladin, MPH, a senior research analyst at Porter Novelli. "The Healthstyles survey can create really in-depth profiles of the target audience."
The key to analyzing information psychographically, of course, is having a large database of respondents. While the VALS database contains information on over 40,000 respondents and can even break down analysis by ZIP code, Porter Novelli's system only surveys a few thousand per year (starting in 1995). However, Porter Novelli's database contains extensive healthcare related psycho-behavioral data on its respondents.
(John Garrett, SRI, 415/ 859-3032; Bob Rueff, Rueff Comm., 612/ 359-4284; Kelly Ladin, Porter Novelli, 202/ 973-5800l; Dr. Susan Kirby, CDC, 404/ 639-7273)