ABSTRACT
Rather than the "race, creed, and color" of demographic seg mentation schemes, lifestyle segmentation is based upon "activities, interests, and opinions," some of which--obviously-reflect one 's personality. This is a rather attractive scheme for segmenting many markets : It is rather obvious, not difficult to do, and communicating to the target segment(s) is not difficult today, given the proliferation of special interest media, particularly magazines . It seems as ifthere is at least one magazine for any particular interest group, no matter how obscure or bizarre. Lastovicka ( 1 982) reviewed the literature, however, and discovered that there was little published evidence to suggest that lifestyle trait researchers had rigorously tested its valid ity; in a test in the article, his results only partially supported its validity. Bryant ( 1 986), however, reviewed several practitioner driven surveys which discovered lifestyle characteristics and traits that aided in delivering a more targeted message. Much of the differ ence in findings between Lastovicka ( 1 982) and Bryant ( 1 986) has to be the difference between academic and practitioner outlook. Bryant claims that lifestyle segmentation research can be used to gain insights on consumer motivation, for turning on creative ideas, and as an enrichment to demographic or geodemographic segmenta tion schemes. He does not claim validity for the concept, only that it seems to work.
