Psychographic Population Segments. Part B: Discuss (6)

¶ … psychographic population segments. Part B: Discuss (6) main social/Cultural In order to discuss the three primary psychographic population segments that are existent today, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of psychographic segmentation. This term merely means stratifying people according to their attitudes, belief systems, opinions, activities, behaviors, and interests. The most readily available and convenient way to stratify the current population, then, based on these factors is to do so by generation.

Thus, the three principle psychographic population segments involve the so-called Baby Boomer Generation, Generation X (which is sometimes grouped together with Generation Y) and the generation known as the millennials or "Generation Me" as affectionately termed by renowned author Jean Twenge. There are several really salient social and cultural trends that have impacted online exchange. Of these, one of the more relevant today includes reputation. Reputation is best defined as the public perception of a certain company, brand or product.

That perception can greatly influence whether or not people want to engage with it and purchase things through a company -- particularly when that purchasing is taking place online. Another very salient social/cultural trend is relevance. This factor actually pertains to the way that a company's marketing and advertisements reach consumers when they are on the web. Thus, platforms such as Google Ads are important because they help organizations deliver ads to people that are germane to their interests and what they are doing.

Another highly valuable social and cultural factor that influences online exchanges is engagement. This factor is not wholly distinguishable from relevance in that if a form of marketing or advertising is engaging, consumers will typically find it relevant. The difference between these two factors, however, is that the latter involves a deal of creativity to facilitate its efficaciousness, whereas the latter is mostly based on timeliness.

Another trend to affect online exchange is broadband use, which downloads quicker than other internet options and allows people to more regularly interact with music, games, and other forms of internet entertainment. Sharing is another trend to affect online exchanges (Boches, 2011). It enables people to more readily evaluate and compare products. Finally, social media and the sentiment data it generates plays an important role in impacting online exchange since it enables people to critique and evaluate products.

Generation X is particularly impacted by social media and the sentiment data that it generates. This generation is savvy enough to realize that it can find out a host of identifying information about a product or a service by evaluating it online from their peer group. This generation is also heavily impacted by reputation, which is one of the factors that social media addresses the most. Millennials or the Me Generation is particular impacted by relevance.

This generation typically has a shorter attention span than the other two generations that are considered part of the three primary psychographic population segments. Therefore, relevance really resonates with it since it is something that is typically hard to sustain for this generation. Engagement's impact upon this generation is.