Chapte R Five: Personality and Consumer Behavior

CHAPTE
R
FIVE and
Personality
Consumer
Behavior
Learning Objectives
1. To Understand How Personality Reflects
Consumers’ Inner Differences.
2. To Understand How Freudian, Neo-
Freudian, and Trait Theories Each Explain
the Influence of Personality on Consumers’
Attitudes and Behavior.
3. To Understand How Personality Reflects
Consumers’ Responses to Product and
Marketing Messages.
Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 2
Learning Objectives (continued)
4. To Understand How Marketers Seek to

Create Brand Personalities-Like Traits.
5. To Understand How the Products and
Services That Consumers Use Enhance
Their Self-Images.
6. To Understand How Consumers Can
Create Online Identities Reflecting a
Particular Set of Personality Traits.
Introduction
• Marketers have long tried to appeal to
consumers in terms of their personality
characteristics. They have intuitively felt
that what consumers purchase, and when
and how they consume, are likely to be
influenced by their personality factors.
What Is the Personality Trait
Characterizing the Consumers to
Whom This Ad Appeals?
Enthusiastic or Extremely
Involved Collectors
Personality and
The Nature of Personality
• The inner psychological characteristics
that both determine and reflect how a
person responds to his or her environment
• The Nature of Personality:
– Personality reflects individual differences
– Personality is consistent and enduring
– Personality can change
Discussion Questions
• How would
you describe
your
personality?
• How does it
influence
products
that you
purchase?
Theories of Personality
• Freudian theory
– Unconscious needs or drives are at the heart
of human motivation
• 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
Freudian Theory
• Id
– Warehouse of primitive or
instinctual needs for which
individual seeks immediate
satisfaction
• Superego
– Individual’s internal
expression of society’s
moral and ethical codes of
conduct
• Ego
– Individual’s conscious control
that balances the demands of
the id and superego
Id, Superego and ego
• Freud proposed that the human personality
consists of three interacting systems:
the id, the superego, and the ego.
• The id was conceptualized as a “warehouse”
of primitive and impulsive drive- basic
physiological needs such as thirst, hunger
and sex-for which the individual seeks
immediate satisfaction without concern for
the specific means of satisfaction.
Superego
• In contrast to Id, the superego is
conceptualized as the individual’s internal
expression of society’s moral and ethical
code of conduct. The superego’s role is to
see that the individual satisfies needs in a
a socially acceptable fashion. Thus, the
superego is a kind of “brake” that restrains
or inhibits the impulsive forces of the id.
Ego
• The ego is the individual’s conscious
control. It functions as an internal monitor
that attempts to balance the impulsive
demands of the id and the sociocultural
constraints of the superego.
• Freud emphasized that an individual’s
personality is formed as he or she passes
through a number of distinct stages of
infant and childhood development.
How Does This Marketing
Message Apply the Notion of
the Id?
It Captures Some of the Mystery and The
Excitement Associated With the “Forces”
of Primitive Drives.
Neo-Freudian Personality
Theory
• Social relationships are fundamental to personality
• Alfred Adler:
– Style of life
– Feelings of inferiority
• Harry Stack Sullivan
– We establish relationships with others to reduce
tensions
• Karen Horney’s three personality groups
– Compliant: move toward others
– Aggressive: move against others
– Detached: move away from others
Why Is Appealing to an Aggressive
Consumer a Logical Position for This
Product?
Because its Consumer Seeks
to Excel and Achieve
Recognition
Trait Theory
• Focus on measurement of personality in
terms of traits
• Trait - any distinguishing, relatively
enduring way in which one individual
differs from another
• Personality is linked to broad product
categories and NOT specific brands
Soup and Soup Lover’s Traits
Table 5.2 (excerpt)
• Chicken Noodle Soup • Vegetable/Minestrone
Lovers Soup Lovers
– Watch a lot of TV – Enjoy the outdoors
– Are family oriented – Usually game for trying new
– Have a great sense of humor things
– Are outgoing and loyal – Spend more money than any
– Like daytime talk shows other group dining in fancy
– Most likely to go to church restaurants
• Tomato Soup Lovers – Likely to be physically fit
– Passionate about reading – Gardening is often a favorite
– Love pets hobby
– Like meeting people for coffee
– Aren’t usually the life of the party
How Does This Ad Target the
Inner-Directed Outdoors
Person?
A Sole Person is Experiencing
the Joys and Adventure of the
Wilderness
Consumer Innovativeness
• Willingness to innovate
• Further broken down for hi-tech products
– Global innovativeness
– Domain-specific innovativeness
– Innovative behavior
Consumer Motivation Scales
Table 5.3 (excerpt)
A “GENERAL” CONSUMER INNOVATIVENESS SCALE
1. I would rather stick to a brand I usually buy than try
something I am not very sure of.
2. When I go to a restaurant, I feel it is safer to order
dishes I am familiar with.
A DOMAIN-SPECIFIC CONSUMER INNOVATIVENESS
SCALE
1. Compared to my friends, I own few rock albums.
2. In general, I am the last in my circle of friends to know
the titles of the latest rock albums.
Dogmatism
• A personality trait that reflects the degree
of rigidity a person displays toward the
unfamiliar and toward information that is
contrary to his or her own established
beliefs
Personality and Understanding
Consumer Behavior
• Ranges on a continuum for inner-
directedness to other-directedness
• Inner-directedness
– rely on own values when evaluating products
– Innovators
• Other-directedness
– look to others
– less likely to be innovators
Need for Uniqueness
• Consumers who avoid conforming to
expectations or standards of others
• Sample Item from a consumers Need for
Uniquensess Scale
1. I collect unusal 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.
Conti…
• As far as I’M concerned, when it comes to
the products I buy and the situations in
Which I use them, Customs and rules are
made to be broken.
Optimum Stimulation Level
• A personality trait that measures the level
or amount of novelty or complexity that
individuals seek in their personal
experiences
• High OSL consumers tend to accept risky
and novel products more readily than low
OSL consumers.
Sensation Seeking
• The need for varied, novel, and complex

sensations and experience. And the
willingness to take social and physical risks
for the sensations.
Variety-Novelty Seeking
• Measures a consumer’s degree of variety
seeking
• Examples include:
– Exploratory Purchase Behavior
– Use Innovativeness
– Vicarious Exploration
Cognitive Personality Factors
• Need for cognition (NFC)
– A person’s craving for enjoyment of thinking
– Individual with high NFC more likely to
respond to ads rich in product information
.
Cognitive Personality Factors
• Visualizers
• Verbalizers
Why Is This Ad Particularly
Appealing to Visualizers?
The Ad Stresses Strong
Visual Dimensions
Why Is This Ad Particularly
Appealing to Verbalizers?
It Features a Detailed
Description
From Consumer Materialism to
Compulsive Consumption
From Consumer Materialism to
Compulsive Consumption
• Fixated consumption behavior
– Consumers fixated on certain products or
categories of products
– Characteristics
• Passionate interest in a product category
• Willingness to go to great lengths to secure objects
• Dedication of time and money to collecting
• Compulsive consumption behavior
– “Addicted” or “out-of-control” consumers
Consumer Ethnocentrism and
Cosmopolitanism
• Ethnocentric consumers feel it is wrong to
purchase foreign-made products because of
the impact on the economy
• They can be targeted by stressing
nationalistic themes
• A cosmopolitan orientation would consider
the word to be their marketplace and would
be attracted to products from other cultures
and countries.
Brand Personality
• Personality-like traits associated with brands
• Examples
– Purdue and freshness
– Nike and athlete
– BMW is performance driven
• Brand personality which is strong and favorable
will strengthen a brand but not necessarily
demand a price premium
In What Ways Do Max and Other Brand
Personifications Help Create VW’s Brand
Image?
Speaks English, is “interviewed”
about VW products, and is a
friend
Product Anthropomorphism and
Brand Personification
• Product Anthropomorphism
– Attributing human characteristics to objects
– Tony the Tiger and Mr. Peanut
• Brand Personification
– Consumer’s perception of brand’s attributes
for a human-like character
– Mr. Coffee is seen as dependable, friendly,
efficient, intelligent and smart.
A Brand Personality Framework
Figure 5.12
Product Personality Issues
• Gender
– Some products perceived as masculine (coffee
and toothpaste) while others as feminine (bath
soap and shampoo)
• Geography
– Actual locations, like Philadelphia cream cheese
and Arizona iced tea
– Fictitious names also used, such as Hidden
Valley and Bear Creek
• Color
– Color combinations in packaging and products
denotes personality
Self and Self-Image
• Consumers have a
variety of enduring
images of
themselves
• These images are
associated with
personality in that
individuals’
consumption relates
to self-image
One or Multiple Selves
• A single consumer will act differently in
different situations or with different people
• We have a variety of social roles
• Marketers can target products to a
particular “self”
Makeup of the Self-Image
• Contains traits, skills, habits, possessions,
relationships, and way of behavior
• Developed through background,
experience, and interaction with others
• Consumers select products congruent with
this image
Which Consumer
Self-Image Does This Ad Target, and Why?
Actual self-image because it tells middle-age
women who like their hair long to continue
doing so.
Different Self-Images
Extended Self
• Possessions can extend self in a number
of ways:
– Actually
– Symbolically
– Conferring status or rank
– Bestowing feelings of immortality
– Endowing with magical powers
Altering the Self-Image
• Consumers use self-altering products to
express individualism by:
– Creating new self
– Maintaining the existing self
– Extending the self
– Conforming
Virtual Personality
• You can be anyone…
– Gender swapping
– Age differences
– Mild-mannered to aggressive

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4. To Understand How Marketers Seek to

• The need for varied, novel, and complex

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