Consumer Behavior

Session 4
Personality and Consumer Behavior
 CHAPTER
FIVE
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

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 3
 Discussion Questions

• How would
you describe
your
personality?
• How does it
influence
products
that you
purchase?

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 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

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 5
 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

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 6
 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

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Why Is Appealing to an Aggressive Consumer a
Logical Position for This Product?

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 Because its Consumer Seeks
to Excel and Achieve Recognition

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 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

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 10
 Personality and Understanding
Consumer Behavior

Consumer Social
Dogmatism
innovativeness character

Optimum
Need for Sensation
stimulation
uniqueness seeking
level

Variety-
novelty
seeking
Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 11
 Consumer Innovativeness

• Willingness to innovate
• Further broken down for hi-tech products
– Global innovativeness
– Domain-specific innovativeness
– Innovative behavior

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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

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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 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.

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

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 17
 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
.

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 Cognitive Personality Factors

• Visualizers
• Verbalizers

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Why Is This Ad Particularly Appealing
to Visualizers?

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 The Ad Stresses Strong
Visual Dimensions

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 Why Is This Ad Particularly
Appealing to Verbalizers?

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 It Features a Detailed Description

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 From Consumer Materialism to
Compulsive Consumption

Acquire and show Self centered and

off possessions selfish

Materialistic
People

Do not get greater

Seek lifestyle full of
personal satisfaction
possessions
from possessions

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 24
 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
• A cosmopolitan orientation would consider the
word to be their marketplace and would be
attracted to products from other cultures and
countries.

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 26
 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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 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
Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Five Slide 29
 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 30