The Use of Demographics and Psychographics to Study Product Effects with Nutrient Supplements: Exploratory...

Demographics and psychographics are used to study the influence of different consumers on product effects in food development and testing. Demographics have a longer history and are routinely used in most research; psychographics are more recent, raising the question of whether they add to research on food products. The research presented here represents extensive exploratory data that demonstrate that both demographic measures and psychographic measures add to our understanding of consumer's liking ratings for nutrient supplements. The results are discussed in the context of broader research on a range of food products. In addition, the research reported here was conducted in four different countries, demonstrating many country effects. Finally, tests were conducted with users of the products, lapsed users of the product, and users of other nutrient supplements (non-users), and this led to many differences in product testing. These results further suggest that age and gender are not the only demographic variables to be studied, along with psychographic variables. The psychographic variables should be selected for a particular product category under investigation, as effects of specific psychographic measures vary for product categories. Specific variables do not fit all products for both demographics and psychographics.