VALS Survey

Today I took the VALS survey, which is a marketing and consulting tool that helps businesses worldwide develop and execute more effective strategies. What the survey does is break consumers into segments to which companies can choose to target market to based on specific personality traits. The basic theory behind VALS is that people express their personalities through their behaviors, which is why the survey asks mostly questions about what you like to do in your spare time and what type of activities you are interested in.

After taking the survey, my results stated that I am mostly an experiencer and secondly an innovator. While these sound nice, reading the experiencer description actually makes me sound like a slave to fashion, which I am definitely not. Contrary to what the description states, I do not spend too much on fashion related products, nor do I enjoy participating in sports and outdoor recreational activities. Perhaps these qualities were given to me because I agreed with most of the statements regarding fashion. However, if there had been a neutral option to choose, I would have gone with that, but since there was not, I had no choice but to choose "slightly agree". This response probably skewed my results into categorizing myself as highly fashionable individula.

As for the innovator quality, I wish I could say this was true but unfortunately I feel like this is an overstatement. Although I do consider myself to be successful and motivated, I do not feel that I am successful enough (at least not yet) to be considered an innovator. I cannot afford to be an innovator who apparently has upscale tastes for niche products and services. I wish.

After taking the survey and receiving my results I quickly skimmed through the other possible outcomes. Overall, I would say that none of these really relate to the way I live my life. All of them either have an extremely negative connotation or positive one, I think I'm somewhere in between. If I were to choose from these options I would say that I am a combination of an Achiever and maybe a Striver for various reasons. I think that the questions on this survey are too specific to make accurate assumptions about individuals and they were completely wrong about me!