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EDITOR—LEWIS C. WINTERSManager of ResearchChevron Corporation

SRI Announces VALS 2Just when I had gotten comfortable with VALS, the folks

at SRI came up with a new VALS—VALS 2. Just when themanagement decision makers where I work had learned totell a "Belonger" from an "Emulator," there's a new termi-nology to learn: "Strugglers," "Believers," "Fulfilleds,""Strivers," "Achievers," "Makers," "Experiencers," and"Actualizers."

VALS is an acronym for "values and lifestyles." It was in-troduced to the marketing world by Arnold Mitchell in 1978.It was portrayed as the first theoretically based psycho-graphic system to incorporate people's social values—theprincipal driving forces of their lives.

VALS categories gave marketers a true a priori lifestyle seg-mentation system—the original nine VALS groups came firstand a questionnaire (66 items) was developed that best dif-ferentiated the nine groups. Other psychographic systemsbecame available (and still are) that essentially do clusteranalysis of attitude, interest, and opinion responses to derivesegments (e.g., Yankelovich Monitor segments). Of course,marketers still can use product attributes and benefits rele-vant to their brand to cluster customers. The new VALS 2program, though still theoretically based, is in my opinion astep closer to these post hoc segmentation systems.

Why Change?VALS had its detractors. Some psychometricians took ex-

ception to reducing the number of items from the originaldown to 30. Some practitioners just couldn't see any discrim-ination between brands in their product category over thedifferent VALS groups. Some just thought that there weretoo many Belongers—one segment that represented nearly athird of all consumers. The SRI folks became critics of theoriginal VALS because economic and other constraints arenow limiting consumers' ability to express their values freely.Also, the items became dated and they saw a blurring in thevalues of persons they labeled "Inner-Directeds" and "Outer-Directeds".

I'm sure that the SRI folks also wanted to appeal to a largesegment of marketers who were nonusers of VALS andthought that a new system relating more directly to con- Lewis C. Winters

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sumer purchase behavior and with more equal sample sizesper segment might do the trick.

Bottom-line, SRI is moving away from the inner- and outer-directedness framework. Now they say it is too general aframework for understanding consumer behavior.

$1.5 Million to Develop VALS 2The new instrument has 38 agree-disagree items (4-point

scale) plus four classification questions (sex, age, education,and income). It took the VALS staff more than two years and$1.5 million to come up with the questionnaire, to solicit theviews of many experts, and to field two large-scale nationalsurveys.

The typology (eight types listed before) is formed by theintersection of two dimensions, (1) self-orientation and (2) psy-chological and material resources (e.g., income, education, en-ergy level, self confidence, etc.).

The self-orientation dimension in VALS 2 has three levels:Principle, Status, and Action. Consumers with a Principleorientation look inside themselves to make choices. Thosewith a Status orientation make choices in relation to others'reactions, desires, etc. Those with an Action orientation makechoices that they think will result in an impact on the worldor on the feelings of themselves or others. The resource di-mension ranges from a level labeled "minimal" to a level la-beled "abundant." The intersections of these dimensions formthe eight groups shown in Figure 1.

Will VALS 2 Work?Clearly 1989 will be a year of transitions for VALS and its

users. At first glance there seems to be virtually no relation-ship between the original VALS and VALS 2, though what-ever connection there is will be known soon—NFO is cur-rently "typing" their panelists on VALS 2 and will soon have

Figure 1

Fulfilleds

Believers

Principle

Actualizers

Achievers

Strivers

Strugglers

S t a t u s ''•- ' '•••':'

Self Orientation

•

Experiencers

Makers

A c t i o n : ' •'•

Abu

ndan

t

- R

esou

rces

—

E 1C 1

p . .

MARKETING RESEARCH, JUNE 1989

almost 60,000 people for whom they can compare surveyson the original VALS and VALS 2. SMRB and MRI will useVALS 2 in their market media research studies in 1989. I'msure that many marketers and agency people will be lookingat the product (brand) by media exposure by VALS 2 cate-gories to see if they can identify new niches.

Personally, I'm not sure the original VALS was so brokenthat this new VALS 2 fix was needed. I hope this isn't goingto end up being a story of a marketer (SRI) trying to appealto the nonuser segment and as a result risking a loss of itscurrent loyal customers. Time will tell. In the meantime, I'mgoing back to try to figure out how to teach people in mycompany how to speak VALS 2 language and to pay the feeto learn along with SRI—for a company like Chevron, thefee will be $30,000 (it's more or less for other companies,agencies and nonprofit groups, etc.). That represents a sub-stantial fee increase for us. Plus, each time a subscriber usesthe VALS 2 questionnaire in a proprietary study there is asmall per-respondent charge by SRI to "type" the respon-dents. •

Reprint No. MR12112

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