Is the VALS system a useful tool for understanding psychographics?

Its clear that values affects the way in which consumers reacts to marketing. Moreover, many behaviors are enacted to fulfill values because values influence attitude, formation and the way in which information is processed. Whether it is product promotion, pricing, advertising, packaging, or even personal selling, good marketer needs to be fully aware and take values into consideration. From our classes, we discussed how culture, personal history, and society drive our values. The effective marketer needs to incorporate all these factors when developing marketing strategies. To facilitate understandings of all these components, research marketing companies often develop or purchase tools like Census data, research surveys and the VALS system to help examine their consumers through segmentation of demographics and psychological profiles.

VALS (Value, Attitudes and Lifestyle) is a proprietary research method of psychographics market segmentation developed by the social scientist and consumer futurist Arnold Mitchell and his colleagues at SRI. VALS helps marketers capture the insight depth of each of our values and view and turn it into a psychographic profile. These information are, in theory, conscious and subconscious information that are otherwise most times consider personal and private. The results gathered helps to guide companies to customize specific products to specific audiences. It drives knowledge and principle motivated by ideas1. Ideally it takes answers gathered from survey and injects it into a weighted algorithm evaluation in which the answers of some key questions would drive and determine the weighted value of the answers of other questions.

VALS Psychology of Market

2012

The answer is then taken to compile into scores that gives a set psychological profile of the target market. Many companies has uses this method to better understand their consumer psychological profile to develop products or marketing campaigns around their target.

Although VALS system is a very useful method to have due to its ability to immediately penetrate and understand the similar psychological mapping that groups its target audience, the danger is hidden in the way that people answers the survey. First, the answers are driven by ones personal self reflection, and understanding of ones action. The conscious vs. unconscious self and the social vs. hidden/private self, may or may not be in synchrony. Moreover, some of the questions may require ones opinion to evaluate and understand of their own behavior beyond their capability. For instance, assuming the answer requires certain maturity to insight, if the product is to design for younger group of audience such as teenagers, the results may not be absolutely representative of their truth self, as they may or may not fully recognize their own behavior. Additionally, present issues may also skew the test results. During finals, for example, students may feel less likely to like their current day to day lifestyle, or feel like they are fashionable in their appearance and therefore long for changes. While most of the other times, they are perfectly content to live in a routine life or are more confident of their appearance against the society standard. So given that the answers will differ, their psychological profile might indicated or sway them to an inaccurate weighted value for the remainder of the answers.

For example, when I first took the survey last week, my profile is of an innovator and achiever, while this week, due to stress and finals, my profile is of the survivor and achiever. But
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VALS Psychology of Market

2012

personally, my on paper psychological profile may have shifted, due to my temporary way of viewing myself and my life, but my value and true lifestyle has certainly not changed, and therefore neither will my consumer behavior and buying habit for the long run. Another example is political campaign. Issues that matter in the society shifts so rapidly, the opinion of their target is constantly on the change. The way one person answers todays poll, can be vastly different from tomorrows answer. However, his values or buying behavior most likely will not change that much, but the way he answers might drive different results due to the weighted system of the survey.

Therefore, just like any tools, there are moments when it is helpful but there will be moments when it is simply unreliable or maybe even irrelevant. VALS system should be use discreetly as a supplemental tool to assist marketers and not as sole analysis approach. The results should not be used as exclusive determinant factor of understanding their target market. Unlike statistics, where outlier doesnt tell the story, the variant that drives different results for VALS system can be the determinant of the whole story. Failure to understand that, is failing to recognize and understand the target audience.