A Demographic and Psychographic Assessment of a Specialty Store's Customers and Non-Customers

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to identify demographic and psychographic profiles of customers and non-customers of a retail specialty store. Objectives were to determine (1) the characteristics of the customers and (2) the combination of characteristics that could be used to discriminate customers from non-customers. A revised version of an instrument prepared by Walter K. Levy Associates was employed. Questionnaires were mailed to a randomly selected sample of 600 customers and 600 non-customers. Of the 760 questionnaires returned, 459 were usable—273 from customers and 186 from non-customers. Stepwise discriminant analysis was used to analyze the data. A set of 24 variables described the characteristics of the customers and non-customers. One variable was concerned with shopper viewpoint, 13 with store image, 6 with shopper behavior, 1 with media preference and usage, and 3 with demographic characteristics. The discriminant function was highly accurate in predicting which respondents were customers and which were non-customers. In the pseudo-jackknifed classification procedure, the 24 variables successfully classified 85 percent of the 459 respondents.