TO BE AND NOT TO BE - LIFE-STYLE IMAGERY, REFERENCE GROUPS, AND THE CLUSTERING OF AMERICA

Advertising often seeks to portray products in the context of idealized and desirable lifestyles. Similarly, consumers' product choices are often motivated by their desire to identify with or to avoid particular idealized lifestyles. In the present paper, we focus on the degree to which consumers' judgments of the consumption patterns associated with marketer defined lifestyle groups correspond to actual market data. The desire to emulate or to avoid reference groups is hypothesized to influence consumers' cognitive representations of the consumption choices associated with these lifestyle groups, and to mediate the convergence between consumer perceptions and empirical consumption data. Analyses focus on consumers' ability to reproduce commercial lifestyle data (accuracy), and the extent to which consumers' perceptions agree with one another (consensus). Significant differences in accuracy and consensus were found among the perceived consumption patterns associated with aspirational and avoidance groups. We discuss the implications of these reference group processes and their relationship to consumers' cognitive representations of lifestyle categories for advertising strategy and research.