EXAMINING LIFESTYLE DATA

The marketing director of a large consumer product firm that sells toys and recreational equipment has commissioned a lifestyle study of the firm's customers. The director wants to better understand the activities, interest, and opinions of the people who buy products from the firm. The lifestyle survey contains approximately 250 questions concerning respondents' preferences for: (1) various types of activities (e.g., snow skiing, hiking, playing chess); (2) interest (e.g., watching sports shows, collecting stamps) and (3) opinions (e.g., political attitudes, opinions about fashion). Respondents' answers to these questions and the distribution of the answers to each question sits in front of the marketing director. The director wonders if there is a better way to summarize the patterns of answers provided by the respondents. Perhaps the questions could be grouped together in some fashion and the scores summarized by group. What multivariate analysis techniques would you recommend to the director to help him understand the knowledge contained in the stack of director's objective is to find out more about the lifestyle patterns of his customers so he can decide ho best to market his firm's products to them.