Challenging definitions

June 2010

I had a conversation with Mike (a coaching client) the other day about social expectations. He is in his late 40s and in a happy long term relationship but hit a real sticking point when we talked about marriage. In his mind, this represented a ‘tick box’ social structure that he didn’t feel that he fitted into - by not following the expected path of marriage, mortgage, children at a younger age, he felt uncomfortable about launching down this path now. Somehow he felt out of step with perceived societal norms, but he also commented that many of his friends were equally out of step – square peg in round hole syndrome.

It started me thinking about the way marketers and researchers categorise our customers and respondents geographically and demographically. Clearly we need some kind of structure to work with when working out key markets/audiences etc, but increasingly the old descriptions are becoming clunky and less effective.

Psychographics have always been useful in further defining our audience/customers through their lifestyles, behaviours and attitudes. However they are often perceived to be difficult to apply and sometimes conflict with our classic demographic view of the market – focus groups may look uncomfortably diverse…

If we continue to apply more psychographic criteria to our targets and recruitment, we are likely to have a more inclusive perspective of our markets, where people may not all look the same, but are driven by similar needs and desires. We might find more effective ways of talking with them. And Mike might fit right in.