When discussing these three concepts, it’s important to look at VALS (values and lifestyles) and PRIZM (potential rating index for zip markets). These can help marketers gain insight into consumer behavior. Consumer insight is what results when you utilize both types of assessments/information. When thinking in terms of your consumers you want to be able to answer these questions:
- Am I looking at the consumer the way they see themselves?
- Am I looking at life from their perspective?
Marketers can gauge and understand what the buying habits of consumers are in certain zip codes, which can be helpful in terms of what they are trying to sell to consumers based of what they could use or view as necessary.
Before completing these assessments for myself, I doubted just how on point these are in identifying consumer personalities and lifestyles in specific regions. My findings afterwards were very spot on in identifying different aspects of myself such as having innovative and achieving values. I found that when inserting my hometown zip code in the PRIZM zip search that it positively showcases what people in my area are like in terms of their values, income, age, number of kids, lifestyle, and even some of their interests. If marketers were to utilize this information, they would be able to successfully appeal and sell to these consumers. However, I did not fit into the results from my zip code search, but my age was not shown in the results. The results consisted of older age groups, which does represent my town correctly as that is the majority of the population.