Life-Style Segmentation with Tailored Interviewing

Abstract

The authors present a tailored interviewing procedure for life-style segmentation. The procedure assumes that a life-style measurement instrument has been designed. A classification of a sample of consumers into life-style segments is obtained using a latent-class model. With these segments, the tailored interview procedure classifies consumers into the same segments in future studies. The procedure minimizes the error of misclassification and decreases the interview costs by using only a fraction of the items for each respondent. In an empirical application to a questionnaire designed to assess lifestyle related to the consumption of fashion, the authors obtain a classification that agrees with the full interview (i.e., using all scale items) for 73% of the respondents while using only 22% of all the questions in a traditional life-style battery.