Customer research tends to be demographically biased. But it is time for us to go a little psycho on customers—psychographic, that is.

When it comes to purchasing behavior, personalities matter. So why do we focus on impersonal customer data such as web site usage or age and gender? While useful, those characteristics don’t describe attitudinal trends which may be more important.

Psychographics are the data points that describe a user’s values, opinions and lifestyle. A psychographic profile should tell us how a person interacts with the world (are they extroverted or introverted? analytical or emotional?) and what they value most (security? family? the environment?).

In the predigital world, gleaning sufficient information to constitute a psychographic profile would often require prohibitively expensive customer anthropology. Now, as consumers spend more time online, consumer data can be better aggregated and analyzed—and cheaply.

Suppose you wanted to market a new brand of organic, flaxseed-infused cereal. While there is no clear demographic group for that product, there may be a well-defined pyschographic one. You could target anyone who identified Whole Foods and Eastern Mountain Sports as favorite brands, expressed a concern about health and fitness and is environmentally conscious. Or you could market to “analytical and research-oriented” folks by talking about the cereal’s unique formula while referencing case studies and endorsements.

The task for next-generation online audience measurement tools is to start understanding traffic along psychographic axes. There are a few ways to do this:

First, members of an audience measurement firm’s user panels could complete a psychographic questionnaire. What are their three favorite brands? What kind of car would they like to be? On a Friday night, would they rather stay in and watch a movie, or go out on the town?

Second, figure out what your users are doing before and after they interact with your company online, and then profile the content and audience of the sites they visit.

Lastly, so-called “single sign on” services will make associating user behavior on different sites much easier. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! all participate in the OpenID project, which allows a user to log into many sites with one set of credentials. A central database might contain everything from blog comments and self-descriptions on social networking sites to purchasing data and search history.

Pyschographics offer companies an ability to understand current and potential customers in terms of the values that inform their purchasing behavior. In the digital world, psychographics will increasingly drive customer understanding.

Anthony “Tony” Tjan is CEO, managing partner and founder of Cue Ball, a venture and early growth equity firm investing in the information media and consumer sectors.