Market segmentation by consumer lifestyle in a wine tourism setting

The generic marketing literature contains a significant volume of reported research into the study of consumer lifestyles as a potentially valuable market segmentation technique. However, despite frequent application by the market research community, lifestyle based segmentation has been criticized for its use of lengthy questionnaires that may pose threats to research effectiveness through respondent fatigue. One alternative to the standard 'values, attitudes and lifestyle' type of survey approach is offered by the List of Values (LO V) instrument. LOV asks respondents to indicate the level of importance they attach to just nine lifestyle-based concepts, and uses these importance ratings to generate a respondent lifestyle profile. The research described in this paper uses a LOV methodology to review lifestyle characteristics of 243 visitors to a well-known wine tourism region in the North Island of New Zealand. The single largest cluster of respondents demonstrated an affinity for a 'player' lifestyle profile, attaching considerable importance to the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure while well on the way to achieving the life targets they had set for themselves; while a sizeable secondary cluster displayed a 'belonger' type of profile based on an underlying desire for conventionality and conformity. These results are compared with those obtained from previously reported LOV testing in alternative settings, and implicationsfor wine tourism marketers are explored.