The Canadian Lifestyles Targeting System

Generally, as marketers, our understanding of our customers is based on the purchase drivers specific to our category. Within this framework, demographics and life-­stage information ‐ and sometimes category-­based segmentation systems - constitute the most important ways we have of understanding who our customers are.

However, we all know that consumers show consistent patterns of purchase across many product categories. The same person who buys high‐end clothing brands or liquor brands also buys high-­end brands of all types. These general patterns add up to a certain lifestyle or style of living. When we don’t know what these deeper motivations are, we tend to see our consumers more narrowly, as “consumers” rather than as “individuals”.

Suppose, however, that you could see these broader patterns. Would this help? We believe it would since you would understand not only that they do want high­‐end brands or quality brands or low-priced brands but exactly why this is so important to them.

Benefits of the Canadian Lifestyles Targeing System

The idea that, especially now, we need to better understand how brands fit into people’s lives was a key insight pioneered by Susan Fournier, then of the Harvard Business School. “People don’t just buy brands, they buy lives”, was how she put it. The Canadian Lifestyles Targeting System is designed to help you see these broader patterns in a rigorous way and to help you identify the underlying life-­motivations which drive the choices that Canadian consumers make. 
View Interactive PDF