Demographics and Psychographics

Demographics – “Demographic” or “Demographic Profile” is a term used in marketing and broadcasting, to describe a demographic grouping or a market segment. This involves age bands, social class bands and gender.

A demographic profile can be used to determine when and where advertising should be placed so the advertisement can achieve very good results. It is important that the advertiser gets a lot of results for their money, and so research is done to match the demographic profile of the target market to the demographic profile of the advertisement. For instance, shortly after the cancellation of Star Trek in 1969, NBC's marketing department complained that was premature or to early. They explained that their newly instituted demographic audience profiling techniques indicated that the series' main young urban audience was highly desirable for advertisers.

Psychographics - In the field of marketing, demographics, opinion research, and social research in general, psychographic variables are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. They are also called IAO variables (for Interests, Activities, and Opinions). They can be contrasted with demographic variables (such as age and gender), behavioural variables (such as usage rate or loyalty), and firmographic variables (such as industry, seniority and functional area).

By Joshua Thomas