The Consumer's Gender
Men and women shop differently online; men prefer sites with lots of pictures of products and women prefer the product shown in a lifestyle context or being used. Men have a different attitude toward shopping and want to get the products and get out usually. Women tend to want to browse and "shop til they drop".Women influence fully two-thirds of all household product purchases. Men buy three-quarters of all alcoholic beverages.Shopping patterns are evolving however. Forty-five percent of married men actually like shopping and consider it relaxing. New brands targeting men include face toners, body washes, hair salons, and diamond ads.
The Consumer's Age and Stage of Life
Companies understand that people buy different things based on their ages and life stages. Companies seek to create products that fit with their customer's age and stage of life.
Example: Ford has created an "Ageing Suit" for young employees to wear when they are designing automobiles. It mimics the restricted mobility and vision people experience as they grow older.
Example: Lisa Rudes Sandel, founder of Not Your Daughter's Jeans (NYDJ) created jeans for baby boomers with womanly bodies. Chronological age is actual age in years; cognitive age is how old one perceives him/her to be. Marketers have found that they must market their products based on cognitive age rather than chronological age.
The Consumer's Lifestyle
Companies spend significant time and money to better understand consumers and their lifestyles. Companies often have consumers fill out extensive questionnaires and submit to in-depth interviews in an effort to learn how consumers spend their time and what their priorities, values and general outlooks on the world are. Proctor and Gamble has gone so far as to follow women around for weeks as they shop, run errands, and socialize with one another. Other companies have paid people to keep a daily journal of their activities and routines. Psychographics combines the lifestyle traits of consumers and their personality styles with an analysis of their attitudes, activities, and values to determine groups of consumers with similar characteristics.
