Demographics vs psychographics

I came across an interesting marketing term today called psychographics. I came across it while researching the demographic for the current project.

What does psychographics mean?

Demographics refers to age, gender, income etc of the person. This is where we as designers and marketer’s try to paint picture of who the person is.

Psychographics on the other hand refers to the psychological needs of the demographic. This is where we have to find out why they would want that particular product over 100’s of others that are similar. When looking at psychographics we’re looking for patterns in the demographics spending habits. We are looking at how they feel towards a product, act towards a product.

This is where a lifestyle board comes in. From it we can asses what the demographic likes to buy, are they brand directed, what is their social class and status. In other words the lifestyle board is a tool we can use to asses the psychographics of a demographic.

For further reading on psychographics:

http://money.howstuffworks.com/marketing-plan14.htm