Introduction: Why Understanding Consumer Preferences is Key
Families today are more diverse in beliefs, expectations, and lifestyles than ever before, especially as newer generations become key decision makers. Some value tradition and religious rituals. Others prioritize cost, environmental impact, or digital convenience. Understanding these nuanced preferences isn’t just helpful—it’s essential.
Batesville’s latest consumer segmentation research identifies 8 distinct consumer profiles across burial and cremation. Each group has unique values, motivations, and pain points. This guide will help funeral professionals better connect with each type of consumer, personalize their approach, and ultimately grow stronger relationships and business outcomes.
How We Gathered This Data:
• Surveyed 3,000 people ages 21+ (2,000 in the U.S.; 1,000 in Canada)
• Recruited from a geographically and demographically
• representative sample of the population
• Survey data was utilized to generate consumer segments,
• aiding Batesville in gaining a deeper comprehension of consumers
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Segment Overview:
Meet the 8 Consumer Personas
Meet the 8 Consumer Types
Below is a snapshot of the 8 key segments identified through Batesville’s research. Each represents a common set of attitudes and needs among today’s funeral consumers.
Burial Segment Overview:
Burial Segments Introduction
Burial Consumers: A Legacy Grounded in Tradition and Meaning
While cremation rates continue to rise, a significant portion of today’s families still choose burial to honor their loved ones. For these consumers, tradition, family legacy, and spiritual meaning often guide their choices. But even within this group, there’s a growing range of motivations, from eco-conscious values to a desire for emotional healing or cultural expression. Understanding these four key burial segments can help funeral professionals tailor services that resonate on a deeper level, whether the focus is ritual, affordability, personalization, or modern convenience.
Burial Market
Progressive Techies
At a Glance
Burial Market
What Drives Them?
Forward-thinking consumers who value innovation, sustainability, and digital ease. They’re likely to research online and respond to tech-driven services.
Top Motivators: Eco-friendly options, permanent place to visit, family legacy, personalization
Pain Points: Outdated practices, too many options, limited tech or sustainable offerings
Forward-thinking consumers who value innovation, sustainability, and digital ease. They’re likely to research online and respond to tech-driven services.
Who Are They?
Today’s funeral consumers are evolving, and few represent that shift more than the Progressive Techies. Progressive Techies are digitally fluent individuals who expect modern solutions for end-of-life planning. They value transparency, eco-conscious options, and the ability to personalize every step of the process. They often research extensively online and gravitate toward brands that align with their values like innovation, quality, and sustainability. Some may believe funerals are outdated and quickly become overwhelmed by the many options. These consumers are also willing to spare no expense particularly for quality goods and services, so utilizing messaging that stresses quality of experience or materials is paramount.
Preferred Experience: Digital-first tools, transparent pricing, environmentally responsible products
What You Can Do
Emphasize personalization, emotional support, and legacy-driven storytelling. Provide pricing upfront, offer curated preplanning packages, and highlight healing elements like remembrance keepsakes. Use visuals that connect with them directly and show families actively working with professionals to foster trust and connection.
Batesville’s forward-thinking solutions are designed to meet the needs of today’s eco- and tech-conscious families. Here are ways we can help you meet Progressive Techies where they are:
Generations™ line of , you can offer these families the type of eco-friendly products that align with their Family Choices® Digital to guide them through their options with an We can help provide online resources that clearly outline product features, pricing, and
Batesville creates products/solutions with your funeral home and families in mind, blending modern design, eco-conscious products and innovative tools this segment values. These consumers are often willing to invest in quality and may also be drawn to cremation options that align with their eco-friendly values.
Shown: Generations Serenity™
Inspired Planners
At a Glance
Burial Market
Emotionally driven consumers seeking purposeful, healing-centered, cultural planning experiences with plenty of emotional support and guidance along the way.
Who Are They?
Inspired Planners value family, religion, legacy, personalization, preparation, and emotional healing. They are optimistic, creative, and always connected on social media. Often motivated by meaningful connection and spiritual support, they want the funeral to reflect a life well lived. These consumers appreciate professionals who guide them with empathy, transparency, and personalized options. This information hungry segment also appreciates having their top purchased service and product options available with pricing.
What Drives Them?
Top Motivators: Personal legacy, healing, preparation, discounted packages
How Batesville Can Help
Batesville’s forward-thinking solutions are designed to meet the needs of today’s eco- and tech-conscious families. Here are ways we can help you meet Progressive Techies where they are:
Pain Points: Emotional overload, uncertainty, information gaps
Preferred Experience: Preplanning, grief support, spiritual or legacy-centered service
What You Can Do
Emphasize personalization, emotional support, and legacy-driven storytelling. Provide pricing upfront, offer curated preplanning packages, and highlight healing elements like remembrance keepsakes. Use visuals that connect with them directly and show families actively working with professionals to foster trust and connection.
• Planning Tools: We can help provide educational guides and simple preplanning resources.
• Personalization Support: Because personalization is very important to this segment, consider showcasing Batesville’s Family Choices® personalization options like LifeSymbols® and LifeStories® display medallions. This will allow these families to create a memorial to reflect the unique life of the deceased.
• Healing-Focused Services: Highlight additional product offerings from Batesville like keepsakes and other remembrance items.
• Bundled Options: Our dedicated sales team can help you develop a customized merchandising plan and pricing strategy that aligns with your families’ needs and your business goals. Then you can craft thoughtfully priced packages including burial space, flowers, casket, and marker.
Get in Touch
Contact your Sales Representative with questions or call 800.622.8373 to get connected with our sales team and start developing a plan that works for your business.
Burial Market
Top Motivators: Affordability, family tradition, simplicity Pain Points: Cost, confusion, fear of mistakes
Preferred Experience: Compassionate step-by-step guidance, easy access to pricing, clear information and educational materials, simple and low-stress choices
Inexperienced Economizers
At a Glance
Often facing a loss for the first time, these consumers seek affordability and clarity. They need help navigating unfamiliar terrain.
Who Are They?
Inexperienced Economizers are often navigating funeral planning for the first time and uncomfortable with end-of-life planning. They’re budgetconscious and uncertain about the process, needing gentle guidance, transparency, and simple solutions. Reassurance and compassion are just as important as affordability for this group. They often seek a simple, low-cost funeral.
What Drives Them?
Forward-thinking consumers who value innovation, sustainability, and digital ease. They’re likely to research online and respond to tech-driven services.
What You Can Do
Be a trusted guide. Offer clear pricing, compassionate support, and packages that simplify choices. Position funeral planning as an act of self care and healing. Use language that validates their discomfort and visuals that show warm, supportive service interactions. Recommend simple, budget-friendly packages including a resting place, headstone, and casket to meet needs without overcomplicating.
How Batesville Can Help
Batesville helps professionals make first-time planning easier and less overwhelming.
• Educational Tools: We can provide FAQs, visual guides, and informational sales sheets to reduce confusion.
• Affordable Options: As this segment is looking for simple, budget-friendly choices, Batesville’s NewPointe® line provides affordable casket options to help these families create meaningful memorials.
• Planning Support: The Family Choices® Digital Showroom gives you the ability to guide these families through their choices in a simplified, less stressful way.
• Bundled Options: Our dedicated sales team can help you develop a customized merchandising plan and pricing strategy that aligns with your families’ needs and your business goals. Then you can craft thoughtfully priced packages including burial space, flowers, casket, and marker.
Devout Traditionalists
At a Glance
Burial Market
16%
Who Are They?
Devout Traditionalists deeply value religious customs, family honor, and rituals. They often have strong ties to faith leaders and expect services that respect long-held traditions. This group is not skeptical of the funeral process—in fact, they view it as an essential part of the grieving process.
What Drives Them?
Top Motivators: Faith, family honor, ritual, permanent place to visit
Pain Points: Loss of tradition, impersonal service
Firm believers in religious and cultural customs, this group expects high respect for tradition and spiritual values.
Preferred Experience: Clergy-led services, ritual adherence, ceremonial elements
What You Can Do
Partner with clergy, offer traditional products, and provide religiously tailored service options. Use messaging that reinforces the dignity, reverence, and full-service care that professionals provide. Highlight family values in imagery and language. Additionally, to be a top-of-mind brand, consider live radio or newspaper advertising to reach this group.
How Batesville Can Help
Batesville helps professionals make first-time planning easier and less overwhelming.
• Faith-Aligned Products: Batesville’s Family Choices® personalization options like LifeSymbols® corners and LifeStories® display medallions feature many religious and faith-based choices. From sacred imagery like the Immaculate Heart of Mary to the Sacred Hear of Jesus and classic symbols like praying hands and crosses, these details help create a unique memorial.
• Showcase Personalization: This group may be more receptive to religiousbased personalization and additional products. By using the Family Choices® Digital Showroom, you can show these families all their options in real-time.
• Casket Options: For a traditional segment like this, consider showcasing the timeless beauty of a wood casket, like Batesville’s Bailey and Clifton models. Not only are these best-selling options, but they’re now available in 28” oversize options.
Browse our Family Personalization Guide to see our personalization choices, including religious and faith-based options.
Cremation Segment Overview:
Cremation Segments Introduction
Market
Cremation Consumers: Diverse Preferences, Unified by Choice Frugal Detractors
Optimistic Economizers Avoidant Tech-Inclineds Creative Conventionalists
Cremation is the fastest growing segment in the funeral industry and, as such, the predominant choice for many families. However, the reasons behind that decision are far from one-size-fits-all. Today’s cremation consumers span a wide spectrum, from pragmatic buyers seeking simplicity to emotionally engaged families looking for unique and personalized tributes. These segments are shaped by a mix of values, including cost, convenience, digital fluency, environmental concern, and cultural identity. By understanding what truly drives each group, funeral professionals can meet them with compassion, clarity, and the flexibility they expect.
Burial
Frugal Detractors
At a Glance
Cremation Market
What Drives Them?
Top Motivators: Low cost, straightforward process
Pain Points: Surprise fees, upselling, unnecessary complexity
Preferred Experience: Minimalist, transparent, respectful
Frugal Detractors choose cremation for its affordability and simplicity. Highly cost-conscious, they value directness and efficiency.
Who Are They?
Frugal Detractors are pragmatic and price-driven. They often choose cremation by default, prioritizing simplicity and affordability over ceremony or emotional expression. This segment tends to distrust upselling and seeks the most efficient option with as little involvement as possible. While not emotionally disengaged, they prefer to honor loved ones in private ways and may view funeral homes with skepticism. While this may be a lower priority audience, it’s still important to provide clarity and convenience when they do engage.
What You Can Do
Focus on price transparency, clearly outline what is included, and eliminate complexity. A streamlined digital experience with FAQs, product comparisons, and testimonials can help build trust. Consider offering crowdfunding resources to alleviate the financial burden and create space for families to honor loved ones without stress.
How Batesville Can Help
Batesville supports simplicity and transparency to meet the needs of budgetminded families.
• Simple Cremation Products: Batesville offers a wide selection of affordable urns and remembrance items that don’t add unnecessary extras.
• Showcase Cremation Containers: This segment will most likely be interested in direct cremation options and won’t require a service. Presenting them with other container options, like the NewPointe® or Trayview®
Alternative Containers from Batesville, will provide these families with a dignified, affordable option.
• Clear Communication: Use the Family Choices® Digital Showroom to clearly outline their choices.
See the Digital Showroom in Action
Learn More
Shown: Starlight Pearl
Optimistic Economizers
At a Glance
Budget-minded but emotionally invested, these consumers seek value and clarity, not just low prices.
Who Are They?
These consumers may be price-sensitive, but they’re not disengaged. Optimistic Economizers care about honoring their loved one; they just need to do so within a budget. Often single, divorced, or widowed, they may be planning alone and value both emotional reassurance and a sense of control. They do their homework and are comfortable asking direct questions. This segment appreciates supportive professionals who treat them with dignity, not sales tactics.
Shown: Vista Reflections
Cremation Market
What Drives Them?
Forward-thinking consumers who value innovation, sustainability, and digital ease. They’re likely to research online and respond to techdriven services.
How Batesville Can Help
Batesville makes it easier to offer value without compromise.
• Bundled Cremation Packages: Our sales team can help you create a product selection perfect for bundling different types of cremation, remembrance jewelry and keepsake items.
Top Motivators: Affordability with meaning
Pain Points: Lack of trust, unclear options
Preferred Experience: Simple explanations, visible pricing
What You Can Do
Be upfront about costs, offer bundled packages that reflect value, and ensure consistent service across online, phone, and in-person channels. Acknowledge their emotional needs and planning burdens and help them navigate the process with compassion and clarity, while highlighting personalization options. This segment buys on average 1.3 products. To increase their basket size, consider offering a low-cost basic package that includes 2 or 3 of your most popular items.
• Showcase Rental Options: For families looking to save, but still want to have a traditional service, rental options, like Batesville’s Fairview™ 27” Rental Casket, provide a cost-effective and dignified option. Additionally, our wide selection of caskets, cremation urns, and remembrance jewelry at various price points means you can offer quality-driven, valuebased choices that still honor the life being remembered.
• Personalization Options: Our Family Choices ® Digital Showroom will help you guide them through their options. And real-time renderings of urn engravings will allow you to show these families exactly how their personalization choices will appear, building trust in you and their purchase.
Avoidant Tech-Inclined
At a Glance
Cremation Market
What Drives Them?
Digital natives or avoidant grievers, they use technology to reduce stress. They dislike face-to-face pressure.
Who Are They?
This group includes digital natives, busy professionals, and emotionally avoidant grievers. They prefer asynchronous communication and avoid traditional in-person arrangements when possible. While not disengaged, they value control and convenience and are more likely to engage when the process is simple, intuitive, and on their terms. They may span generations and have diverse needs, so product and service offerings must reflect that flexibility.
Top Motivators: Lower costs, convenience, control, minimal emotional labor
Pain Points: In-person overwhelm, complexity
Preferred Experience: Self-serve online, asynchronous communication
What You Can Do
Offer digital and non-digital collateral to reduce pressure, educate without overwhelm, and provide multiple product and service paths. Position funeral professionals as necessary, valuable guides who understand their fear and are there to support them. Consider offering financing to boost product engagement and highlight the diversity of offerings to make them feel seen and supported since this is a multi-generational segment with varying tastes.
How Batesville Can Help
Batesville can help you build digital and non-digital pathways for independent, tech-inclined consumers.
• Family Choices® Digital Showroom: The tech-forward, guided planning process of the Digital Showroom will allow you to educate this segment on their choices, without pressure.
• Offer More Choices: As this is a diverse group made up of a wide range of generations, ensuring you have the right selection of cremation products is important. Batesville’s updated line of more than 150 new products offers choices for every family and every budget.
• Web Presence: A funeral home website built by Batesville can help you enhance and capitalize on local SEO to help more families like these find your services.
Creative Conventional
At a Glance
Cremation Market
What Drives Them?
Top Motivators: Customization, memory-making
This group blends tradition with personal expression. They want meaningful experiences tailored to the individual.
Who Are They?
A Creative Conventional wants more than a standard service, but they also value tradition. They seek to co-create an experience that’s emotionally rich, family-centered, and reflective of their loved one’s personality and culture. Personalization, spirituality, and sustainability are often key drivers. This group appreciates hands-on support but also wants room to be involved in service design.
Pain Points: Cold, generic services
Preferred Experience: Family involvement, creative personalization
What You Can Do
Batesville can help you provide ways for families to celebrate loved ones through meaningful and personal experiences.
• Dual Disposition: Dual disposition caskets might be an ideal solution for these families, as they are driven by tradition instead of price. To provide flexibility to funeral homes, most of Batesville’s wood caskets are designed for dual disposition. Consider showcasing a cremationfriendly option like the Woodhaven Pecan casket, which combines the timeliness beauty of wood with personalization options to provide a more traditional approach to a cremation service.
• Planning Tools: Our Family Choices® Digital Showroom allows you to showcase product and personalization options and makes it easy to involve and engage these families in the planning process.
Turning Insight into Action: What to Do Next
Understanding segments is only the first step. Here’s how to use this knowledge in everyday practice:
Identifying Consumer Types in Real Life Staff Training and Internal Communication
Listen carefully during early conversations. What matters most to them: tradition, cost, control, convenience?
Ask open-ended questions: “What was important to your loved one?” or “What kind of experience are you hoping for?”
Pay attention to tone and vocabulary. Are they research-driven, spiritual, overwhelmed, or value-focused?
Tailoring Your Approach
Use cues from these early interactions to guide service recommendations.
Example: A tech-savvy, overwhelmed family may fit the Avoidant Tech-Inclined profile. Offer online tools and low-pressure contact options.
Example: A family discussing religious needs likely aligns with Devout Traditionalists. Emphasize faith-based service packages.
Share this segmentation guide with all frontline staff.
Host short workshops to help them role-play conversations with different types of families.
Create internal cheat sheets or desk reference cards with quick cues and suggestions.
Market and Service Design
Create promotional materials and web content that reflect segmentspecific needs (e.g., sustainability for Progressive Techies).
Review your merchandise selection and messaging to ensure all key types feel seen.
Community Engagement and Growth
Use this segmentation lens to identify gaps in who you’re serving well.
Create outreach efforts or events that target under-represented segments (e.g., tech-focused preplanning sessions).
These tools are for any funeral professional who wants to understand, connect with, and serve families better.
Bringing it All Together: Personalization with Purpose
Today’s families are not one-size-fits all. Their values, needs, and expectations vary widely, and so should the way we serve them. Understanding these distinct consumer personas helps you go beyond assumptions and deliver experiences that feel seen, supported, and deeply personal. Whether it’s embracing technology, honoring tradition, easing financial strain, or offering space for healing, this research equips you with the clarity and confidence to meet families where they are.
By aligning your services, messaging, and product offerings with what matters most to each type of consumer, you’re not only creating better experiences—you’re building long-term trust and loyalty. And as expectations continue to evolve, this approach helps you stay adaptable, intentional, and compassionate in every interaction.
As always, Batesville is here to help and support you in these efforts. Talk to your Batesville representative today to learn how to apply this research in your own community. Learn More
Ready to Dig Deeper into the Data? Download our Consumer Trends eBook.