CHAPTER FIVE

Personality and Consumer

Behavior
 Learning Objectives
• To understand how personality reflects
consumers’ inner differences.
• To understand how freudian, neo-freudian,
and trait theories each explain the
influence of personality on consumers’
attitudes and behavior.
• To understand how personality reflects
consumers’ responses to product and
marketing messages.
Chapter Five Slide
Learning Objectives (continued)
• To understand how marketers seek to
create brand personalities-like traits.
• To understand how the products and
services that consumers use enhance their
self-images.
• To understand how consumers can create
online identities reflecting a particular set
of personality traits.

Chapter Five Slide

 Personality and
The Nature of Personality
• Heredity, early childhood experiences, and
other social influences have a strong effect
on who you become.
• Personality is the inner psychological
characteristics that both determine and
reflect how a person responds to his or her
environment.
• Research findings regarding the nature of
personality:
Chapter Five Slide
 Personality and
The Nature of Personality….cont’d
• Personality reflects individual differences;
no two people are exactly the same.
– Therefore, we can categorize them into groups on the
basis of few traits, e.g., low sociability/high sociability,
etc.
• Personality is consistent and enduring;
– this helps marketers predict consumer behavior over
time in terms of personality
– Personality can change; due to major life events,
such as marriage.

Chapter Five Slide

 Theories of Personality
• There are three major theories of
personality:
– (1) Freudian theory,
– (2) Neo-Freudian theory, and
– (3) trait theory.
• We have chosen them over other theories
because each has played a role in the study
of the relationship between consumer
behavior and personality.
Chapter Five Slide
Theories of Personality….cont’d
• Freudian theory
– unconscious needs, especially sexual and other
biological 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
– Focuses on empirical measures of personality in terms
of specific psychological characteristics, called “traits”,
that set one person apart from another person. Eg.,
innovativeness, materialism and ethnocentrism.

Chapter Five Slide

 Freudian Theory
Freud proposed that the human personality consists of
three interacting systems: the id, the superego, and the ego
• Id
– “warehouse” of primitive and
impulsive drives—basic physiological
needs such as thirst, hunger, and sex—
for which the individual seeks
immediate satisfaction
• Superego
– Individual’s internal expression of
society’s moral and ethical codes of
conduct. Its role is to see that
individuals satisfy their needs in a
socially acceptable fashion
• Ego
– Individual’s conscious control that
balances the demands of the id and
superego
Chapter Five Slide
 Neo-Freudian Personality Theory
• Neo-Freudian’s are concerned with social relationships.
• These relationships are formed to reduce feelings of
inferiority or tension.
• People can be classified as to how they interact with others
– are they compliant, aggressive, or detached.
– A compliant individual desires attention,
– an aggressive desires admirations, and
– a detached person desires independence and freedom
from obligation.
• What is interesting is that these different personality groups
differ in their brand usage.

Chapter Five Slide

 Trait Theory
• Focus on measurement of personality in
terms of traits
• Trait- any distinguishing, relatively
enduring way in which one individual
differs from another.
• Researchers have found that traits are more
tied to general product categories than
specific brands.

Chapter Five Slide

Personality and Understanding
Consumer Behavior
Marketers are very interested in the link between personality and
consumer behavior. These are seven topics which are examined on
the following slides.

Consumer Social
Dogmatism
innovativeness character

Optimum
Need for Sensation
stimulation
uniqueness seeking
level

Variety-
novelty
seeking

Chapter Five Slide

 Consumer Innovativeness
• Innovativeness is the degree of a consumer’s
willingness to adopt new products.
• Further broken down for hi-tech products
– Global innovativeness:- trait that exists
independent of any product-related context .
– Domain-specific innovativeness:-a narrowly
defined activity within a specific domain or
product category
– Innovative behavior:- open to new ideas and
the first to purchase products.
Chapter Five Slide
 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.

Chapter Five Slide

 Dogmatism
• Dogmatism is one’s degree of rigidity—the
opposite of being open-minded—toward
information and opinion contradictory to one’s
beliefs and views (i.e., closed-mindedness).
• Dogmatic is a personality trait that describes how
rigid or open a person is to new and unfamiliar
ideas and products.
• A person who is highly dogmatic approaches the
unfamiliar defensively and with discomfort.

Chapter Five Slide

 Dogmatism…cont’d
• They will rarely consider the unfamiliar and
tend to be very close minded.
• Marketers have realized this type of
customer appreciates advertising appeals
with celebrities and other experts.
• Low-dogmatic consumers are more
receptive to messages that stress factual
differences, product benefits, and other
product-usage information.
Chapter Five Slide
 Social Character: Inner- versus
Other-Directedness
• Inner-directed consumers rely on their own inner
values or standards in evaluating new products and
are likely to be consumer innovators.
• Other-directed consumers look to others for
guidance as to what is appropriate or inappropriate
and are unlikely to be consumer innovators.
• Inner-directed people prefer ads that stress product
features and personal benefits,
• other-directed people prefer ads that
feature/approving social acceptance.
Chapter Five Slide
 Need for Uniqueness
• An individual’s pursuit of differentness relative to others
that is achieved through the acquisition of consumer goods
in order to enhance one’s personal and social identity.
• Individuals with a high need for uniqueness adopt new
products and brands quicker than others.
• There is a measurement scale that researchers use to
quantify an individual’s need for uniqueness.
• If the respondent scores high on this scale, then they have a
higher need for uniqueness.
• Marketers target people with a high need for uniqueness
with marketing stimuli designed to enhance self-perceptions
of uniqueness.

Chapter Five Slide

Illustrative Opinions of a Young Executive
with a High Need for Uniqueness
– When I travel, I’m always seeking out unusual
gifts for myself.
– I’m happy when other people tell me that my
taste is “different” and “uncommon.”
– Standing out and being different is important
to me.
– I stop buying brands when everyone starts to
buy them.
– Being different is my own personal trademark.
 Optimum Stimulation Level
• Optimum stimulation level (OSL) is the degree to
which people like novel, complex, and unusual
experiences (i.e., high OSL) or prefer a simple,
uncluttered, and calm existence (i.e., low OSL).
• Research has found that consumers seeking high
levels of optimum stimulation are more willing to
take risks, more likely to try new products and be
innovative, and seek to maintain high optimum
stimulation levels while shopping.

Chapter Five Slide

 Sensation Seeking
• Closely related to the OSL concept is
sensation seeking: one’s need for varied,
novel, and complex sensations and
experiences, and the willingness to take
risks for the sake of such experiences.

Chapter Five Slide

 Variety-Novelty Seeking
• Another trait similar to OSL is variety or novelty
seeking. In consumer behavior, variety and
novelty seeking consists of::
– Exploratory purchase behavior; switching
brands to experience new, different, and
possibly better alternatives.
– Vicarious exploration; gathering information
about new and different product alternatives
and contemplating/planning buying them.
– Use innovativeness; using an already adopted
product in a new or novel way Chapter Five Slide
 Cognitive Personality Factors
• Need for cognition (NFC)
– A person’s craving/desire for enjoyment of
thinking
– Individual with high NFC more likely to
respond to ads rich in product information.

Chapter Five Slide

 Cognitive Personality Factors
• Another cognitive personality factor that
researchers have isolated is whether a
consumer is a visualizer or a verbalizer.
• Verbalizers prefer promotional messages
containing a lot of written, textual, and
verbal information.
• Visualizers are more receptive to pictorial
images

Chapter Five Slide

Why Is This Ad Particularly
Appealing to Visualizers?

Chapter Five Slide

The Ad Stresses Strong
Visual Dimensions

Chapter Five Slide

Why Is This Ad Particularly
Appealing to Verbalizers?

Chapter Five Slide

It Features a Detailed
Description

Chapter Five Slide

From Consumer Materialism to
Compulsive Consumption

Acquire and show Self centered and

off possessions selfish
Materialistic
People
Do not get greater
Seek lifestyle full personal satisfaction
of possessions from possessions

Chapter Five Slide

 Consumer Ethnocentrism and
Cosmopolitanism
• Ethnocentric consumers feel it is wrong
to purchase foreign-made products because
of the impact on the economy
• Marketers successfully target ethnocentric
consumers by stressing nationalistic
themes in their promotional appeals (e.g.,
“Made in France”), because these
consumers are more likely to buy products
made in their native lands.
Chapter Five Slide
 CONT’D
• Non-ethnocentric or less ethnocentric consumers
tend to evaluate foreign-made products more
objectively—for their extrinsic characteristics
• If the image of the country is positive, for example
a French wine, it would be advantageous for the
marketer to emphasize where the product was
made.
• Cosmopolitanism is the opposite of
ethnocentrism. There is an increase in Australia,
due to the multiculturalism.
 Brand Personality
• Brand personality can be tied
to/associated with many a successful
brand [e.g., Nike and athlete].
• If the personality is favorable and strong, it
will strengthen the brand and lead to a
more favorable attitude, brand preference,
higher purchase intention, and brand
loyalty.

Chapter Five Slide

 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
Chapter Five Slide
 Self and Self-Image
• Self-image represents the way a person views herself or
himself. Perceptions of self are often related to the
purchases of products and services, because consumers
often select products that are consistent with their self-
images and enhance them. In fact, consumers have
multiple “selves,” because people act differently in
different situations.

Chapter Five Slide

 Components of self-image
• Actual self-image is the way consumers see
themselves;
• Ideal self-image is how consumers would like to
see themselves;
• Social self-image is how consumers feel others
see them; and
• Ideal social self-image is how consumers would
like others to see them.
• Expected Self-Image is how consumers expect
to see themselves in the future
Chapter Five Slide 34
 Cont’d
• Consumers select the type of self-image that guides
them in the context of buying situations.
• For instance, with everyday household products,
consumers might be guided by their actual self-
images, whereas for some socially enhancing
products, they might be guided by their social self-
images.
– Understanding the dimensions of self-image enables
marketers to design effective promotional messages
targeting various segments.
The end !