Psychographics are something we in marketing have known about for a while. They are completely worthless as they are self reported. People will answer the survey questions with the answer they ‘think’ will cast them in the best light, not with the answer that most accurately reflects their true self. Of course not everyone does this, but enough do to make any characterizations from psychographics meaningless.
Just like the self reporting of psychographics, the whole “hybrid” issue is simply a matter of appearances. I saw a report last year comparing the Prius to the Civic hybrid. Both cars are comparable in all respects, expect sales. It was suggested that the reason the Prius outsells the Civic hybrid (by a lot) is because the Civic hybrid looks exactly like it’s non-hybrid brother. People want other to know they are driving a hybrid, hence they purchase the car that by its very image tells the world they’re driving one.
And by the way, I work at a fair sized advertising agency (80 people), and fully a third of us drive SUV’s. Yet somehow we still manage to be creative.
