Lifestyle Identification and Segmentation: Implications for Regional Cooperation and Prosperity
Personal lifestyle is a model of living shown trough activities, interests and opinions. It evolves under the influence of many elements such as culture, subculture, demographics, social class, reference groups, family, as well as individual characteristics such as motivation, emotions and personality. Lifestyle encompasses all of the psyhological and social variables that determine consumer behavior ; therefore, market segmentation on the bases of lifestyle is very broad and offers qualitative insight into potential target markets. Lifestyle research has been neglected in Southeast Europe. This study is one of the first of its kind in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. It's research results obtained in the study have enabled the identification of lifestyle segments in each of the countries and differences between them. Furthermore, the research defined lifestyle groups throughout the entire region, and has significant managerial implications as the first psycho-graphic segmentation of a mearket consisting of twenty million consumers.