The Effectiveness of Demographic and Psychographic Variables for Explaining Brand and Product Category Use

The predictive relationship of a large and comprehensive set of personal descriptors to aspects of product and brand use is examined. The descriptors comprise demographic and general psychographic variables frequently used in segmentation studies and studies of consumer purchase behavior. The evidence is overwhelming that the covariates are related to brand use in an identical way for all brands, indicating that they are not useful for predicting relative brand preference. The covariates are shown to be predictive of product use. Discussion of the explanatory content of the variables is offered.