CHAPTER

SIX
Personality and
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.
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 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.

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 What Is the Personality

• Personality is defined as those inner psychological

characteristics that both determine and reflect
how a person responds to his or her environment.
• The emphasis in this definition is on inner
characteristics—those specific qualities,
attributes, traits, factors, and mannerisms that
distinguish one individual from other individuals.
 Personality and
The Nature of Personality
• The Nature of Personality:
– Personality reflects individual differences
– Personality is consistent and enduring
– Personality can change
• Personality Reflects Individual Differences
• An individual’s personality is a unique combination
of factors; no two individuals are exactly alike.
• It enables us to categorize consumers into ≠ groups
on the basis of a single trait or a few traits.
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 Personality is Consistent & Enduring

• Marketers learn which personality characteristics

influence specific consumer responses and
attempt to appeal to relevant traits inherent in
their target group of consumers.
• Even though an individual’s personality may be
consistent, consumption behavior often varies
considerably because of psychological,
sociocultural, situational and environmental
factors that affect behavior.
 Personality Can Change
• An individual’s personality may be altered by major
life events, such as the birth of a child, a divorce, or
a major career change.
• An individual’s personality also changes as part of a
gradual maturing process.
– Personality stereotypes may also change over time.
– There is a prediction, for example, that a personality
convergence is occurring between men and women.
 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

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 Freudian Theory
• Id
– Warehouse of primitive or instinctual
needs for which individual seeks
immediate satisfaction such as: thirst,
hunger, and sex
• Superego
– It ’s role is to see that the individual
satisfies needs in a socially
acceptable fashion.
– Is a kind of “brake” that restrains or
inhibits the impulsive forces of the
id.
• Ego
– Individual’s conscious control that
balances demands of id & superego
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 Freudian Theory & Product Personality
• Freud: Individual’s personality is formed as
he passes through distinct stages of infant
development.
• Stages : oral, anal, phallic, latent, & genital
• An adult’s personality is determined by how
well he deals with crises experienced while
passing through each of these stages.
 Freudian Theory & Product Personality

• Those Freud’s theories see that human drives

are largely unconscious, & that consumers are
unaware of true reasons for buying what they
buy.
• Researchers focus on consumer purchases
situations as extension of consumer’s
personality
 Neo-Freudian Personality Theory
• Social relationships are fundamental to personality
• Alfred Adler: humans seek to attain various rational goals, which
he called:
– 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

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 Trait Theory
• Measurement of personality in terms of traits
• Trait - any distinguishing, relatively enduring way
in which one individual differs from another
1. Consumer innovativeness—how receptive a person is to
new experiences
2. Consumer materialism—the degree of the consumer’s
attachment to “worldly possessions”
3. Consumer ethnocentrism—the consumer’s likelihood to
accept or reject foreign-made products
• Personality is linked to broad product categories
and NOT specific brands
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 Personality and Understanding
Consumer Behavior
• Marketers are interested in understanding how
personality influences consumption behavior
• They will understand consumers better
• Therefore, will segment & target those consumers
who are likely to respond positively to their product
or service communications
• consumer innovators: open to new ideas and likely
to try new products. Those innovators are crucial to
the success of new products.
 Personality and Understanding
Consumer Behavior

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 Consumer Innovativeness
• Willingness to innovate
• Further broken down for hi-tech products
– A recent study developed a hierarchical model
consisting of three levels of personality:
• Global innovativeness – a personal trait that exists
independent of any context; one that represents the “very
nature” of consumers’ innovativeness.
• Domain-specific innovativeness – a more narrowly defined
activity within a specific domain or product category.
• Innovative behavior – a pattern of actions that indicate early
acceptance of change and adoption of innovations.
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 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
• low in dogmatism (open-minded): prefer
innovative products to established ones
• high in dogmatism (closed-minded): choose
established product to innovations & tend to
be more receptive to ads for new products
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 Social Character

• 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

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 Need for Uniqueness

• Consumers who avoid conforming to

expectations or standards of others

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 Optimum Stimulation Level

• A personality trait that measures the level or

amount of complexity that individuals seek in
their personal experiences
• High OSL consumers tend to accept risky and
novel products more readily than low OSL
consumers.

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 Sensation Seeking

• The need for varied, novel, and complex

sensations and experience. And the willingness to
take social and physical risks for the sensations.

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 Variety-Novelty Seeking
• Measures a consumer’s degree of variety seeking
• Types of variety seeking:
– exploratory purchase behavior: switching brands to
experience new and possibly better alternatives
– vicarious exploration: securing information about a new or
different alternative and then contemplating or even
daydreaming about the option
– use innovativeness: Consumer uses an already adopted
product in a new or novel way
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 Cognitive Personality Factors

1. 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
– Consumers who are relatively low in NC are
more likely to be attracted to the background or
peripheral aspects of an ad.

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 Cognitive Personality Factors

2. Visualizers versus Verbalizers

• Visualizers are consumers who prefer visual
information and products that stress the visual.
• Verbalizers are consumers who prefer written or
verbal info & products that stress the verbal.
– Object visualizers encode & process images as a single
perceptual unit.
– Spatial visualizers process images piece by piece.

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 Consumer Materialism

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 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

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 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 in promotional effort
• A cosmopolitan consumer ≠ ethnocentric one
• He consider the word to be their marketplace
and would be attracted to products from other
cultures and countries.
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 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

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 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: dependable, friendly, efficient, intelligent
– 5 defining dimensions of a brand’s personality: sincerity,
excitement, competence, sophistication, ruggedness.

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 A Brand Personality Framework
Figure 5.12

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 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
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 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

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 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 should target their products and
services to consumers within the context of a
particular “self,” and in certain cases, offer a
choice of different products for different selves.

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 33
 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

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 Different Self-Images

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 Extended Self

• Possessions can extend self in a number of ways:

– Actually: by allowing the person to do things that
otherwise would be very difficult to accomplish
– Symbolically: by making person feel better or “bigger”
– By conferring status or rank
– By bestowing feelings of immortality: by leaving valued
possessions to young family members
– By endowing with magical powers

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 Altering the Self-Image

• Consumers use self-altering products to

express individualism by:
– Creating new self
– Maintaining the existing self
– Extending the self
– Conforming

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 Virtual Personality

• You can be anyone…

– Gender swapping
– Age differences
– Mild-mannered to aggressive

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