Asking Questions - The Definitive Guide To Questionnaire Design ...

254 ASKING QUESTIONS
the frequency that people have dinner parties, drink wine with dinner,
exercise, and read nonfiction books has also been useful in
helping develop various psychographic profiles (Wansink, 2003a).
6. Conduct a pilot study and use multivariate analysis. When it is
clear what some of the potentially distinguishing criteria are, conduct
a pilot study. The results from this study can be analyzed
(through factor analysis, cluster analysis, and mean comparisons)
and used to reduce unneeded questionnaire items before conducting
your main study.
7. Name the psychographic segments descriptively. After a reasonably
accurate set of segmentation profiles have been identified,
it is useful to give descriptive names to these profiles. Although simply
naming them Segment 1 , Segment 2 , and so on is often used in
academic circles, it hinders one’s ability to interpret the data efficiently.
For example, a recent study of influential cooks (Wansink,
2003a) defined segments such as “competitive cooks,” “innovative
cooks,” “traditional cooks,” “stockpiling cooks,” “guilty cooks,” and
so on. These definitions were useful in identifying which segments
of cooks were most likely to adopt healthy new cooking methods
and ingredients, and which ones were most likely to be influential
in disseminating these new ingredients through word-of-mouth.
Example: A Psychographic Soup Story
One example of using psychographic questions involves a study
done for a soup company (Wansink and Park, 2000a). Over many
years, this soup company had promoted all its soups in a generic
manner. There had recently been evidence, however, that different
types of people preferred different types of soups. The company reasoned
that if it could make some basic generalizations as to what
types of people preferred what types of soups, it could use this information
to promote its soups in a more tailored manner. For example,
if health-oriented, outdoorsy people tended to prefer vegetable
soup, the company could develop a more tailored “vegetable soup