Psychographics

Psychographics is defined as "market research or statistics classifying population groups according to psychological variables." The term psychographics is derived from the words "psychological" and "demographics." Two common approaches to psychographics include analysis of consumers' activities, interests, and opinions (AIO variables), and values and lifestyles (VALS). Psychographics have been applied to the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. Psychographic segmentation is a technique for grouping populations into sub-groups according to similar psychological variables. Psychographic studies of individuals or communities can be valuable in the fields of marketing, demographics, opinion research, prediction, and social research in general. Psychographic attributes can be contrasted with demographic variables (such as age and gender), behavioral variables (such as purchase data or usage rate), and organizational descriptors (sometimes called firmographic variables), such as industry, number of employees, and functional area. Psychographic methods gained prominence in the 2016 US presidential election and the opposing campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, with the latter using them extensively in microtargeting advertisements to narrow constituencies.