Astrology and market segmentation

Can we use astrology for market segmentation purposes? Let’s explore the specific concept. One of the main difficulties for marketers is to identify the psychographic characteristics of their target groups. In other words, it’s hard to understand the personalities, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles of your potential customers. Marketers can have a lot of information about the behavior of their potential customers, for example, the web pages they have visited, the products they have purchased, etc., but they have no idea who they really are.

The only way to gather such information is to convince your prospects to fill out complicated psychological questionnaires, but this is of course quite optimistic…

So this is where astrology can play a vital role in identifying the psychographic characteristics of people. The great advantage of astrology is that with a minimal amount of data, just the date and time of birth of the prospects can produce their rather analytical personality profiles. That information can be easily combined with demographic and behavioral data of prospects to achieve a more precise segmentation of your market.

The question that naturally arises is “Can we trust astrology for business matters?” I recently read a book on astrology whose writer, a well-known astrologer, stated that “I don’t know why astrology works, but it works!” Astrology is an ancient practice, having been dated to the 3rd millennium BC, and has not only survived to the present day, but is widely used by millions of people around the world. That means that although astrology cannot be scientifically proven, it has deep roots in our collective unconscious. Also, just because astrology can’t be proven doesn’t mean we can reject it, it’s not a scientific approach.

The use of astrology for market segmentation has already been investigated. In his article “Using Astrology in Market Segmentation” (1995), Management Decision, Vol. 33 Iss: 1, pp.48-57, VW. Mitchell, concludes that “astrology may have some use when applied to certain populations or subgroups within certain lifestyles and personality-related markets.”

The use of astrology potentially allows us to combine the measurement of demographics with the psychological insights of psychographics. It is suitable for segmentation purposes as it creates segments that are measurable, substantial, accessible, comprehensive, relatively stable over time, likely to respond differently to different marketing programs, and have clear boundaries.

Most people agree that different zodiac signs correspond to fundamentally different types of personalities. So, based on the 12 zodiac signs, we can have 12 segments. If we combine the ascendant with the 12 signs of the zodiac we can have 144 potential segments. If we add more astrological parameters we can have even more segments. If we use the personal birth chart of our prospects, we can have a fairly detailed psychographic profile of each of them, which can be useful for one-on-one marketing. The potential of using astrology for market segmentation purposes looks quite promising, especially for highly emotionally-involved buying processes.

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