LECTURE FOUR

Personality and Consumer Behavior

 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

Chapter Five Slide 2

 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

Chapter Five Slide 3

 Snack Foods and Personality Traits
Table 5.1 (excerpt)
Snack Personality Traits
Foods
Potato Ambitious, successful, high achiever, impatient with less
chips than the best.
Tortilla Perfectionist, high expectations, punctual, conservative,
chips responsible.
Pretzels Lively, easily bored with same old routine, flirtatious,
intuitive, may over commit to projects.
Snack Rational, logical, contemplative, shy, prefers time alone.
crackers
Cheese Conscientious, principled, proper, fair, may appear rigid
curls but has great integrity, plans ahead, loves order.

Chapter Five Slide 4

 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

Chapter Five Slide 5

 Soup and Soup Lover’s Traits
Table 5.2 (excerpt)
• Chicken Noodle Soup Lovers
– Watch a lot of TV
– Are family oriented
– Have a great sense of humor
– Are outgoing and loyal
– Like daytime talk shows
– Most likely to go to church
• Tomato Soup Lovers
– Passionate about reading
– Love pets
– Like meeting people for coffee
– Aren’t usually the life of the
party
• Vegetable/Minestrone Soup
Lovers
– Enjoy the outdoors
– Usually game for trying new
things
– Spend more money than any
other group dining in fancy
restaurants
– Likely to be physically fit
– Gardening is often a favorite
hobby
Chapter Five Slide 6
Personality and Understanding
Consumer Behavior

Chapter Five Slide 7

 Consumer Innovativeness

• Willingness to innovate

Chapter Five Slide 8

 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

Chapter Five Slide 9

 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

Chapter Five Slide 10

 Need for Uniqueness

• Consumers who avoid conforming to

expectations or standards of others

Chapter Five Slide 11

 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.

Chapter Five Slide 12

 Sensation Seeking

• The need for varied, novel, and complex

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

Chapter Five Slide 13

 Variety-Novelty Seeking

• Measures a consumer’s degree of variety

seeking
• Examples include:
– Exploratory Purchase Behavior
– Use Innovativeness
– Vicarious Exploration

Chapter Five Slide 14

 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

Chapter Five Slide 15

 Cognitive Personality Factors

• Visualizers
• Verbalizers

Chapter Five Slide 16

From Consumer Materialism to
Compulsive Consumption

Chapter Five Slide 17

 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

Chapter Five Slide 18

 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
world to be their marketplace and would be
attracted to products from other cultures and
countries.

Chapter Five Slide 19

 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

Chapter Five Slide 20

 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.

Chapter Five Slide 21

A Brand Personality Framework
Figure 5.12

Chapter Five Slide 22

 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 23
 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

Chapter Five Slide 24

 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”

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 25
 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

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 26
Different Self-Images
 Extended Self

• Possessions can extend self in a number of

ways:
– Actually
– Symbolically
– Conferring status or rank