Issue #6: Marketing and selling CanGo’s products to the international market.
Analysis/Summary:
CanGo faces challenges of addressing the consumer buying process in the international market. They need to ask themselves the following questions. How can CanGo appeal to consumers in other countries? What psychological, personal, social and situational influences motivate consumer behavior in other countries? Why has CanGo’s shipping increased to Japan? VALS is a consulting and consumer research service that CanGo can turn to for assistance. It is one of the most important tools for understanding consumer behavior. VALS helps strengthen demographic characterizations by explaining the deeper psychological drivers of consumer behavior. They provide clients with tailored marketing strategies for targeting, positioning, and communications—real-world, real-time, actionable strategies. VALS identifies the psychological motivations that predict consumer differences ("Strategic business insights," 2012).

Recommendation to CanGo:
Building a Better Year Consultants, LLC, believes using VALS would be very beneficial for CanGo’s analysis of target markets. VALS segments US adults into eight distinct types using a specific set of psychological traits and key demographics that drive consumer behavior. The US Framework, a graphic representation of VALS, illustrates the eight types and two critical concepts for understanding consumers: primary motivation and resources. The combination of motivations and resources determines how a person will express himself or herself in the marketplace as a consumer ("Strategic business insights," 2012). The eight VALS types include: innovators, thinkers, believers, achievers, strivers, experiencers, makers and survivors.

Using the VALS framework has led CanGo to categorize their customers as "Experiencers" with secondary aspects of