Lifestyle Typologies

Lifestyles can be defined as the way people live and present themselves to others. They do this through the brands of products they purchase, which reflect matters such as their taste, values, beliefs, and socio-economic status. As consumer cultures have developed, consumer lifestyles have become increasingly significant sources of identity and status, making typologies of them particularly valuable for marketing purposes. Typologies involving lifestyles are classifications of different categories of consumers. These lifestyle typologies are generally developed by marketers to enable advertisers to target individuals more effectively.

Marketers are interested in classifying people to understand people's consumer behavior better. There are two rules that must be followed when classifying people's lifestyles. First, the categories must not be ambiguous—each person must fit into one and only one group. Second, the classification of lifestyles must be comprehensive and cover everyone.

There have been numerous lifestyle typologies developed by marketing companies over the past decades. Here, a few lifestyle typologies are discussed, beginning with that created by the Total Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey. It developed an instrument called Equitrends that studied approximately two hundred brands in fifty-five product groups. The company used a survey to study consumption practices and ended up classifying Americans into seven categories and listing some products they prefer, which are described0 below.

• Intellects: Michelin Tires, Wall Street Journal
• Conformists: Kodak, Hallmark, Crest
• Popularity Seekers: Nike, Mercedes Benz, Home Box Office
• Pragmatists: Fisher-Price, Rubbermaid, Mr. Coffee
• Activists: Maytag, Kenmore
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• Relief-Seekers: IBM computers, CNN, Hilton
• Sentimentalists: Campbell soups, Hershey's, Folgers

Marketing companies tend to give jazzy, descriptive and memorable names to their categories.

One of the more popular typologies was the Values and Lifestyles or VALS typology developed by SRI, the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California. SRI developed two different typologies: first VALS1 and then its successor, VALS 2. The VALS typologies categorize consumers by their demographics and on the basis of cultural trends. The categories were developed by giving consumers a thirty-question survey that not only obtained demographic information but also provided insights into their values and beliefs. The lists below show the different categories for each of the VALS marketing typologies and briefly describe each of them.