Lifestyle stands at the confluence of several traditional academic disciplines, generating expertise from sociology and the social sciences in fields as diverse as business, retailing, marketing, consumer understanding, and health and social care. The multiplicity of fields and disciplines interested in lifestyle research adds complexity to an already dynamic and rapidly changing subject of study.
A number of academic and corporate conventions are utilized, but often, lifestyle research focuses on subgroups within the overall population identified by age, occupation, religion, sexuality, medical issues, or activities.This market segmentation of the consumer market is a key use for lifestyle research in terms of business research. As the importance of the customer in deciding the success of business operations has grown more apparent to firms, so has the necessity of lifestyle-based market segmentation and continuing cultural change. Lifestyle research not only illuminates ongoing social and cultural change in purchasing dynamics, related group behavior, and lifestyle decision making, but it also serves as a key source of information for strategic planning within business and the ongoing development of successful corporate strategy.
The connections between lifestyle research and the development of successful marketing strategies are now being debated in the academic literature, both from a management and a social science standpoint. The continued development of successful and strategic company development requires a growing grasp of the different research that contributes to this field of study. Typically, study in this field begins with the notion of lifestyle and then applies it to various aspects of an individual's or group's lifestyle. Activities/behavior, beliefs and attitudes, individuals versus groups, group interaction, coherence, recognizability, and choice are key topics that may influence lifestyle.Lifestyle research may concentrate on the consequences of belonging to a particular group or on the implications of specific lifestyles, such as the role of lifestyle in the management of clinical conditions or the impact of a deliberately acquired lifestyle on other aspects of an individual's life. In business, lifestyle research is used to categorise consumers based on patterns of behavior, purchasing, and so on, as well as to consider lifestyle as a crucial aspect in the development of new products, services, and so on. One key distinction is made between research that aims to find causal linkages between a lifestyle and the development of specific patterns of health and behavior and research that examines the influence of a lifestyle.
Both have significant business ramifications because they are directly related to the production and promotion of goods and services. The lifestyles studied may be prescriptive—and most of the study in this area is focused on health—or larger shifts reflecting the evolution of society, the economy, and the workplace. Generally, business research focuses on the latter case, where the intertwining of cause, effect, and incremental change provides fertile ground for investigation.
Although unlikely to be simple and in this case, continual skill improvement within the consumer group would play a role, this example highlights the complexities of cause, effect, and contributing factors in lifestyle research. Lifestyle retailing is another key field of study, where the promotion of a "lifestyle package" tied to a brand, a group of items, or a service is part of many companies' marketing strategy. In a consumer economy, the creation of aspirational brands, whether for products or services is a significant motivation for many firms. However, successful lifestyle retailing strategies typically build on initial market-segmentation work, and successful lifestyle retailing strategies tend to imply a highly well-researched and clearly characterized market-segmentation plan.
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