Personality and Consumer

Behavior

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 What Is Personality
• The inner psychological characteristics
that both determine and reflect how a
person responds to his or her
environment
• Those specific qualities, attributes,
traits, factors and mannerisms that’s
unique
• Highly useful in market segmentation

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 The Nature of Personality
• Personality reflects individual
differences-consumer ethnocentrism
• Personality is consistent and enduring-
important to explain or predict consumer
behavior
• Personality can change- convergence in
the personality characteristics of men and
women

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 Theories of Personality
• Freudian theory-psychoanalytic theory of
personality
– Unconscious needs or drives are at the heart of
human motivation and personality
• Neo-Freudian personality theory
– Social relationships are fundamental to the
formation and development of personality
• Trait theory
– Quantitative approach to personality as a set of
psychological traits

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 Freudian Theory
Human personality consists of 3 interacting
systems:
• Id
– Warehouse of primitive or instinctual needs and impulsive drives
for which individual seeks immediate satisfaction
• Superego
– Individual’s internal expression of society’s moral and ethical
codes of conduct, internal monitor that attempts to balance, kind
of brake that inhibits the impulsive forced of id
• Ego
– Individual’s conscious control that balances the demands of the
id and superego

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A Representation of the Interrelationships
Among
the Id, Ego, and Superego

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 Freudian Theory and
“Product Personality”
• Consumer researchers using Freud’s
personality theory see consumer
purchases as a reflection and
extension of the consumer’s own
personality

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 Snack Food Personality Traits

Potato Chips:
Ambitious, successful, high achiever, impatient

Popcorn:
Takes charge, pitches in often, modest, self confident, not a show off

Nuts:
Easygoing, empathetic, understanding, calm

Snack Crackers:
Rational, logical, contemplative, shy, prefers time alone

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Neo-Freudian Personality Theory
• Humans are seeking to attain various rational
goals- styles of life

• We seek goals to overcome feelings of

inferiority by striving for superiority

• We continually attempt to establish relationships

with others to reduce tensions- anxiety

• Karen Horney was interested in child-parent

relationships and desires to conquer feelings of
anxiety.
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 Horney’s CAD Theory
• Using the context of child-parent
relationships, individuals can be
classified into:
– Compliant individuals
– Aggressive individuals
– Detached individuals

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 CAD theory
• Compliant Personality
– One who desires to be loved, wanted,
and appreciated by others.
• Aggressive Personality
– One who moves against others (e.g.,
competes with others, desires to excel
and win admiration).
• Detached Personality
– One who moves away from others (e.g., who
desires independence, self-sufficiency, and
freedom from obligations).

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 Trait Theory
• Personality theory with a focus on
specific psychological characteristics-
traits
• Primarily quantitative or empirical
• Trait - any distinguishing, relatively
enduring way in which one individual
differs from another
• Personality is linked to how consumers
make their choices or to consumption of a
broad product category - not a specific
brand
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Important Traits Studied

Value
Materialism
consciousness

Complaint
Innovativeness
proneness

Competitiveness

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Examples of Other Traits in
Consumer Research

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Five-Factor Model

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 Personality & Understanding
Consumer Behavior
Consumer Innovators and non-
innovators: related personality traits
• Innovativeness • The degree to which
• Dogmatism consumers are
receptive to new
• Social character products, new services,
• Need for uniqueness or new practices
• Optimum stimulation • Three levels of
level personality-global,
• Sensation seeking domain specific,
innovative behavior
• Variety-novelty
seeking 5 - 19
 Personality & Understanding
Consumer Behavior…
Consumer Innovators and non-innovators:
related personality traits
• Innovativeness • A personality trait that
• Dogmatism reflects the degree of
• Social character rigidity a person
• Need for uniqueness displays toward the
•
unfamiliar and toward
Optimum stimulation
level information that is
contrary to his or her
• Sensation seeking
own established
• Variety-novelty
beliefs
seeking 5 - 20
 Personality & Understanding
Consumer Behavior…
Consumer Innovators and non-
innovators: related personality traits
• Innovativeness • Socio-cultural groups
• • Ranges on a continuum for
Dogmatism
inner-directedness to other-
• Social character directedness
• Need for uniqueness • Inner-directedness
• Optimum stimulation – rely on own values when
evaluating products
level
– Innovators
• Sensation seeking • Other-directedness
• Variety-novelty seeking – look to others
– less likely to be innovators
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 Personality & Understanding
Consumer Behavior…
Consumer Innovators and non-
innovators: related personality traits
• Innovativeness • Consumers who
• Dogmatism avoid appearing to
• Social character conform to
• Need for uniqueness expectations or
standards of others-
• Optimum stimulation
high NFU individuals
level
are non concerned
• Sensation seeking
about being
• Variety-novelty criticized
seeking 5 - 22
A Sample Items from a Consumers’ Need for
Uniqueness Scale

1. I collect unusual products as a way of telling

people I’m different
2. When dressing, I have sometimes dared to be
different in ways that others are likely to
disapprove
3. When products or brands I like become extremely
popular, I lose interest in them
4. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to the
products I buy and the situations in which I use
them, custom and rules are made to be broken
5. I have sometimes purchased unusual products or
brands as a way to create a more distinctive
personal image
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Cognitive Personality Factors
• Need for cognition (NC)
– A person’s craving for enjoyment of thinking
– Individual with high NC more likely to
respond to ads rich in product information
• Visualizers versus verbalizers
– A person’s preference for information
presented visually or verbally
– Verbalizers prefer written information over
graphics and images.
– Object Visualizers and spatial Visualizers

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 Discussion Question
• How does NC and visualizer/verbalizer
affect advertisers?
• Which media is best for each group?

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 Interpersonal Influence
• Information influence: tendency to accept
information from others about reality – word of
mouth
• Value-expressive influence: tendency to
enhance their social standing by attempting to be
similar to those with whom they compare
themselves – reference groups
• Utilitarian influence: tendency to conform to the
wishes of others to obtain rewards – peer
pressure

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From Consumer Materialism
to Compulsive Consumption
• Consumer materialism
– The extent to which a person is considered
“materialistic”
– Consumption dreaming
• Fixated consumption behavior
– Consumers fixated on certain products or
categories of products
• Compulsive consumption behavior
– “Addicted” or “out-of-control” consumers
– Oniomania
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 Sample Items to Measure Compulsive
Buying
1. When I have money, I cannot help but spend
part or the whole of it.
2. I am often impulsive in my buying behavior.
3. As soon as I enter a shopping center, I have an
irresistible urge to go into a shop to buy
something.
4. I am one of those people who often responds to
direct mail offers.
5. I have often bought a product that I did not
need, while knowing I had very little money
left.
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 Consumer Ethnocentrism

• Ethnocentric consumers feel it is

wrong to purchase foreign-made
products
• They can be targeted by stressing
nationalistic themes
• Cosmopolitanism

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This ad is
designed to
appeal to
consumer
ethno-
centrism.

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 Brand Personality
• Personality-like traits associated with brands
• Examples
– Limca and freshness
– Nike and athlete
– BMW is performance driven
– Levi’s 501 jeans are dependable and rugged
• Functional or symbolic
• Brand personality which is strong and favorable
will strengthen a brand but not necessarily
demand a price premium

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Product Anthropomorphism
• Attributing human characteristics to
something that is not human
• Zoo zoo and Fido

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 Brand Personification
• Tries to recast consumer’s perception of
the attributes of the product or service
into human like characters
• Is useful in developing associations with
products
• Dishwashing liquid: demanding task
masters or high energy people
• Brand zealots – VW Beetle customers
– Develop communal relationships

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 Product Personality Issues
• Gender
– Often used for brand personalities
– Some product perceived as masculine (coffee and
toothpaste) while others as feminine (bath soap and
shampoo)
• Geography
– Actual locations like Philadelphia cream cheese
(manufactured in Illinios) and Arizona iced tea (New York)
– Fictitious names also used such as Hidden Valley and Bear
Creek
• Color
– Color combinations in packaging and products denotes
personality

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Marketers
often use a
fictitious
location to
help with
personality.

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 The Personality-like Associations of Colors
• America’s favored color
• IBM holds the title to blue
• Associated with club soda
• Men seek products packaged in blue
BLUE Commands • Houses painted blue are avoided
respect, authority • Low-calorie, skim milk
• Coffee in a blue can perceived as “mild”

Caution, novelty, • Eyes register it faster

• Coffee in yellow can perceived as “weak”
temporary,
YELLOW • Stops traffic
warmth • Sells a house

Secure, natural, • Good work environment

• Associated with vegetables and chewing gum
relaxed or easy-
• Canada Dry ginger ale sales increased when it
GREEN going, living changed sugar-free package from red to green
things and white
 Human, exciting, • Makes food “smell” better
hot, passionate, • Coffee in a red can perceived as “rich”
RED strong • Women have a preference for bluish red
• Men have a preference for yellowish red
• Coca-Cola “owns” red
Powerful, •Draws attention quickly
ORANGE
affordable, informal
Informal and •Coffee in a dark-brown can was “too
BROWN
relaxed, masculine, strong”
nature ••Men seek products packaged in brown
Goodness, purity, Suggests reduced calories
chastity, •Pure and wholesome food
WHITE
cleanliness, •Clean, bath products, feminine
delicacy,
refinement,
Sophistication, •Powerful clothing
BLACK formality
power, authority, •High-tech electronics
mystery
SILVER, Regal, wealthy, •Suggests premium price
GOLD stately 5 - 42
 Self and Self-Image
• Consumers have a variety of enduring
images of themselves- extended self
• These images are associated with
personality in that individuals
consumption relates to self-image

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 The Marketing Concept
Issues Related to
Self and Self-Image
• One or multiple • A single consumer will
selves act differently in
• Makeup of the different situations or
self-image with different people
• We have a variety of
• Extended self
social roles
• Altering the self- • Marketers can target
image products to a
particular “self”
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 The Marketing Concept
Issues Related to
Self and Self-Image
• One or multiple • Contains traits, skills, habits,
selves possessions, relationships
• Makeup of the self - and way of behavior
• Developed through
image
background, experience, and
• Extended self
interaction with others
• Altering the self- • Consumers select products
image congruent with this image
– Mahindra Duro Ad

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 Different Self-Images

Actual Self-
Ideal Self-Image
Image

Ideal Social
Social Self-Image
Self-Image

Expected Ought-to
Self-Image Self-Image

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Which consumer self-image
Does this as target and why?

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 The Marketing Concept
Issues Related to
Self and Self-Image
• One or multiple • Possessions can extend
selves self in a number of ways:
– Actually
• Makeup of the – Symbolically
self-image – Conferring status or rank
• Extended self – Bestowing feelings of
immortality
• Altering the self- – Endowing with magical
image powers

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 The Marketing Concept
Issues Related to
Self and Self-Image
• One or multiple • Consumers use self-
altering products to
selves
express individualism by
• Makeup of the – Creating new self
self-image – Maintaining the existing
self
• Extended self
– Extending the self-
• Altering the self modify
-image – Conforming-to fit a
profession
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 Virtual Personality or Self
• Gender swapping
• Old to young
• Married to single
• Grossly overweight to lean
• Mild mannered to aggressive
• Introvert to extrovert

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 Individual Assignment
• How would you describe your
personality?
• How does it influence products that
you purchase?
www.outofservice.com/bigfive
• Pick three of your favorite brands.
• Describe their personality. Do they
have a gender? What personality traits
do they have?
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