Week 3

Personality
Personality
• The personality of a person is the result of his individual traits he inherits
and acquires by experience as he grows up in life.
• This unique and inborn personality of an individual distinguishes his
persona from other humans with whom he interacts and deals with in his
day-to-day life
• A person’s personality gets shaped by the influence exerted by the people
around him.
• The personality also gets modified due to a person acquiring education and
knowledge.
• However, the personality of a person does not get altered very radically
Why understand personality
• Understand those factors that are helpful in making of a consumer
personality.
• Understand the influences that make him behave in a particular way.
• Determine how and why a consumer behaves in a particular way in his
buying and consuming
• habits.
• Strategize their product development plans based on the habits and
behavioural aspects as exhibited by the consumers.
• Strategize their marketing and sales plans for their products and services.
• Strategize their distribution plans for their products and services.
• Strategize their promotion plans as based on these habits and peculiarity
spelt by the individual personality of the consumer.
Definition of personality
• Personality depends on a number of inherited and
experiential factors and inner psychological characters.
• Attributes
• Traits
• Mannerisms
Personality
• Habitual traits a person exhibits to cope up with the ways of his or her
life.
• Personality is stable traits.
• Personality development is the process that differentiates between
inner personality and current personality over a period of time.
• Personality of a person is
• His judgement
• His thinking
• His feelings
• His reactions and how he behaves
Personality
• Each person response to his surroundings differently
• An individual’s personality is his perceived characteristics
• An individual’s perception about the is his self concept.
• Self concept may or may not be similar with what others think.
• Personality remain consistent across situation but our behavior can
vary from situation to situation
• Biology effects our personality
Definition of Personality
• “inner psychological characteristics that both determine and reflect
how a person responds to his/her environment”
• “the dynamic organization within the individual, of those
psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment to
environment.” Gordon.W. Allport
• the characteristics and distinctive trait of an individual, the stable and
shifting pattern of relationship between these traits and the way the
traits interact to help or hinder the adjustment of a person to other
people and situations. Morgan and King
Nature and properties of personality
• Properties of personality
• Personality reflects individual traits
• Personality is stable, consistent and enduring.
• Personality can change under specific circumstances, though it may not
change in all circumstances.
Individual differences
• Inner characteristics of an individual are unique.
• No two individuals can have completely similar personalities.
• Traits can be similar, but personality as a whole can never be identical.
• Individuals can be different on
• Submissive or aggressive
• High or low risk takers
• Introvert or extrovert
• Stable or moody
• Open or shy
• People cannot be segmentized based on similar personalities, it would
have made a marketer’s job very easy but it doesn’t seem possible
Personality is stable, consistent and enduring
• A marketer can tailor his products according to different traits of
human personality but cannot change the personality in order to sell
his products.
• If a marketer knows what trait can trigger a buy response, then he
can appeal to that trait.
• Even when the personality remains the same consumer behavior may
change subject of cultural, psychological, social and situational
factors.
Personality can change
• An individual personality can change based on many psychological,
social, cultural events.
• “When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person
who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about” Haruki Murakami
• “trauma changes us permanently”
Daniel, T. (2012). Losing faith vs. gaining perspective: How trauma and loss can create a more spacious form of spiritual
awareness. Journal of Spirituality & Paranormal Studies, 35(1), 18-22.
• Marriages can change individuals
• Death of a loved one
• Birth of a child
• Education, job, status, family
Personality can change
• Usually change in personality is not gradual and not volatile
adaptation.
• Personality and environment mutually evolve
• Men change slowly as compared to women.
• Women have adapted themselves to a more masculine and liberal
personality in just over two decades time.
Theories of personality
• Theories of personality throw better light on nature and formation of
personality
• These theories look at personality from different viewpoints such as
psychological, social, and human traits.
• Some of the theories are
• Freudian theory
• Neo-Freudian theory
• Trait theory
Freud theory
• ID
• Primitive and impulsive drives such as hunger, thirst
• Super Ego
• The regulator which ensure that basic impulses are fulfilled in a socially
acceptable manner
• Ego
• Ego acts as the internal examiner that balances the impulsive demands of id
and the demands of socio-cultural expectations.
Application
• Marketers have realized that human drives are largely subconscious.
• They are aware that their target customers are mostly unaware of the
actual reason they want to buy their products.
• The advertisers and marketing strategists know that they need to bring to
the fore the underlying motivations and drives of their consumers in order
to stimulate their buying action.
• Many a time, we see sexual connotations in advertisements.
• Some advertisements show glamorous people using the product. In each
case, we see that advertisements use some kind of justification for
acceptance and buying of the product by the consumer rather than for its
practical uses. These advertisements use such communication and
message that aims to reduce the stress of super ego and bring forward the
justification as put forth by the individual ego
Subliminal marketing
Neo-Freudian Theory of Personality
• Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Alfred Adler, and Henry Sullivan are
considered the developers of these theories.
• They provided a fresh explanation of Freud's ideas.
• They are of the view that human beings evolve and adapt with
relationship to their environment guided by conscious mind
• The idea of social relationships is fundamental to personality
development
• Human personality is not biological outcome alone but of culture,
social and historical factors
Carl Jung’s and Isabel Briggs Mayer (MBTI)
• Carl Jung’s personality elements
• Sensing-intuiting of the human mind
• Thinking and feeling
• Judging-perceiving
• Extroversion-introversion
• MBTI
• Sensing-intuiting
• Thinking and feeling
• Judging and perceiving
• Extrovert and introvert
Karen Horney
• She believed that human personality was result of their adaption to
their culture
• It was the result of defense mechanism people develop to deal with
difficult circumstances.
• It formed the bases for development of CAD
• Compliant personality
• Aggressive personality
• Detached
Trait theory
• “a distinguishing, relatively enduring characteristic in an individual
that differentiates two individuals from one another”
• The trait theory based on individual personality factors is an empirical
attempt to identify and categorize personality characteristics that
could be useful for marketers.
• The marketers can identify and separate the characteristics of
individuals that constitute a certain market segment.
• Personality traits that have been useful in differentiating between
consumer innovators and non-innovators as major influencers of
behaviour
Consumer innovativeness
• Consumer innovativeness helps marketers in identifying the
consumer’s attitude towards the new and innovative products.
• Consumer innovators are those kinds of consumers who are likely to
try new products and new ideas and innovations
• Consumers low in rigidity and open to innovativeness are more likely
to prefer untried products to the products which have already been
established in the market
• Advertisers make use of the celebrity models to direct their messages
to the consumers high in dogmatism.
Consumer openness to influence
• Consumer openness to influence refers to the formation of the social
character of an individual consumer.
• The social character of a consumer is a personality trait that tells
about his distinction of personality and behaviour from the self
directed to other-directed
• Locus of causality
• Conformity vs assertiveness
Consumer Materialism
• Consumer materialism refers to the characteristics that can tell about
the materialistic attitude of the consumer.
• Such consumers feel possession is the indicator of their identity and
status
• They like to acquire and show off their material possession
• Such characters look for lifestyle of possession and comfort, though
they have been identified to be little self-centered and selfish.
Consumer ethnocentrism
• It refers to the consumer segments that are receptive to foreign made
products
• Researchers have developed a scale to identify such consumers i.e.
CETSCALE
• Consumer ethnocentrism specifically refers to ethnocentric views held by
consumers in one country.
• Consumers may believe that it is not appropriate, and possibly even
immoral, to buy products from other countries.
• Buying foreign made products can make their country men job-less
• Many domestic companies use consumer ethnocentrism to advertise their
products to appeal to the patriotism of such people.
Schiffman and Kanuk theory of consumer
behavior
• They identified these 6 traits for marketers
• Consumer innovativeness
• Dogmatism
• Optimum stimulation level
• Variety and novelty seeking
• Social character
• Need for uniqueness
• Consumer innovativeness
• The innate innovativeness of the consumer will always be prompting him to
seek new products. The marketers will not be able to find loyalty among
• their consumers who have such innovativeness in their characters leading to
uncertainty.
• Dogmatism
• Many individuals do not like to change their beliefs and ideas, and put
resistance to new ideas and change, such personalities are dogmatic. A
dogmatic wont allow new products in the market, it creates problems for the
marketer as improving or introducing new products becomes difficult.
• Optimum stimulation level
• Individual’s different on the scale of need for stimulation. Researchers have
found that a moderate level of stimulation yields best results. Consumer with
high level of stimulation goes with innovative and new products. They seek
additional information about the product attributes.
Variety and novelty seeking
• It is the need of the individual for varied, novel, and complex
sensations and experience. The person with this trait exhibits his
willingness to take physical and social risks for the sake of such
experience.
• People with exploratory purchase behaviour switch from one brand
to another every time they buy something to experience newer and
probably better alternatives to their existing or previous choice.
• Cognitive personality factor theory. A person with high cognition is
more likely to seek detail information beyond the advertisement
about a product compared to a low cognition person.
Social character
• The knowledge about social character of the consumer enables
marketers to know whether the consumer will be able to make his
own decisions or he needs to be directed by other social influencers
• Self directed consumers do not take a decision in a hurry, nor do they
want to become the first adopters. They always wait for and give a
chance to others to express their opinion and reaction to innovations.
• These “other directed” personality characters want to make sure
others have adopted and tried the new products, and they will buy
only if the feedback is positive. Such characters are not leaders.
Need for uniqueness
• There are people who want to be different, become heroes by
adopting their uniqueness, and do not want to go with the flow.
• Such people generally raise themselves above all social criticism and
take decisions that set them apart from other persons of their social
class and breed
• They are immune to the hearsay and others’ opinions.
• A marketer should know that they make unconventional choices of
products, which could make them appear unique and different from
the crowd.
Why a marketer should know about theories
of personality
• Marketers undertake the study of consumer behaviour to find out as
to when, why, how, and where people do or do not buy products and
services.
• To decipher the decision making process of certain type of individuals.
• Their study of consumer behaviour tries to assess the influences of
groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in
general on the consumer.
• The study of consumer behaviour is based on the customer playing
the three distinct roles of user, payer and buyer.