Understanding your customers...

As marketers start using data to better understand customers and "how they think," there's a move towards "psychographic" profiling. Instead of saying that 2 customers who live in the same zip code or have the same income are the same, they try to say, "what is this person really like?"

• Are they a technology early adopter?
• Do they like to work with their hands?
• Do they view themselves as a "trendsetter?"

Playing off of this, the webiste www.gifts.com is using this psychographic info to try and help sell stuff.

Instead of profiling you, they say, you know your friends...but we'll organize the products according to the different personality types.

Kind of neat to see this in action.