nd potential customers.The typical typology would break up the sample data into five to eight groups. Each group is given a descriptive name and a profile of the ideal member (the one with all the qualities of said lifestyle group) is provided to the customer to make evaluation easier. However it is still very difficult to compare, evaluate and analyze the different typologies, Due to the subjective basis of the topic being studied, researcher bias, and the lack of knowledge about the working of the system which is due to the systems usually being owned and patented by a research firm or advertising agency.The most widely used and best-known segmentation system is the Values and Lifestyles System (VALS) developed by SRI international in California.VALSVALS 1 was introduced in 1978, sorted consumers into nine groups according to their inner and outer orientation. Although VALS 1 was initially praised in the press as “revolutionary” by the mid 1980’s marketers were disillusioned, it wasn’t actionable they complained.VALS 1 ran into problems because it’s originator, Arnold Mitchell, made a crucial research mistake; he embraced Maslow’s needs hierarchy and designed a study to prove the theory. Research should seek to discover whatever truth exists in the population or data, not to impose a preconceived truth upon the data. Maslow theorized that people move up the needs hierarchy (survival, security, belonging, esteem, self-actualization). Critics of VALS1 charged that the needs and the values Mitchell derived from this had little to do with why people buy products and services.SRI international, California, went on to fix this problem by totally redesigning the study and creating the VALS 2, which was released in 1989. VALS2 segments consumers by real world resources like money and education as well as attitudes, to make it more relative to buying ability.VALS2 is designed to predict the behavior of consu...
