About Vals Essay

Strategic
Business
Insights

U.S. VALS™
VALS™ is a lens for understanding consumer psychology. VALS consulting and consumerresearch services provide clients with tailored, real-time marketing solutions for customer:
• Targeting
• Positioning
• Communications.

What Can U.S. VALS™ Do for You?
• Provide a fresh perspective by “getting into the heads” of your customers.
• Identify your best targets—retain the most profitable customers or attract new consumers.
• Create richly textured consumer profiles or personas of psychological traits, attitudes,
behaviors, lifestyles, and demographics.
• Increase communication effectiveness by identifying your target’s distinct communication
styles, content preferences, and media channel use.
• Innovate new products and services for specific consumer targets.
• Locate geographic concentrations of your target.
Surveys and focus groups inform our work. Training and reports support ongoing learning to
provide your team with a common language.

U.S. VALS™ Framework: Motivations and Resources
Motivations and resources determine how people make choices in the
marketplace.
People buy products and services and seek experiences that fulfill characteristic motivations and
give shape, substance, and satisfaction to their lives.
• Some consumers pursue what is “responsible.”
• Others are motivated by symbols of success.
• Some consumers are driven by experience.

Psychological resources influence a person’s ability and desire to buy.
In addition to age, income, and education, consumers’ energy, self-confidence, intellectualism,
novelty seeking, innovativeness, impulsiveness, leadership, and vanity are critical resources
in the marketplace. Various levels of these resources enhance or constrain a person’s level of
consumption.

INNOVATORS

Primary Motivation
Ideals

Achievement

THINKERS

ACHIEVERS

BELIEVERS

STRIVERS

SURVIVORS

High Resources
High Innovation...