Personality

Personality refers to a person’s unique psychological makeup and how it consistently

influences the way a person responds to his or her environment.

Consumer Behavior on the Couch: Freudian Theory

Much of one’s adult personality stems from a fundamental conflict between a person’s desire
to gratify his or her physical needs and the necessity to function as a responsible member of
society. - Sigmund Freud

Freudian Systems
The id is about immediate gratification, selfish and illogical.
It operates according to the pleasure principle

The superego is essentially the person’s conscience.

It internalizes society’s rules and tries to prevent the id from seeking selfish gratification.

The ego is a referee in the fight between temptation and virtue.

It tries to balance these opposing forces according to the reality principle

The ego relies on the symbolism in products to compromise between the demands of the id
and the prohibitions of the superego.
The connection between product symbolism and motivation: The product stands for, or
represents, a consumer’s true goal, which is socially unacceptable or unattainable

“Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar”: Products as Sexual Symbols

Many popular applications of Freud’s ideas revolve around the use of objects that resemble
sex organs
Most Freudian applications in marketing relate to a product’s supposed sexual symbolism.
He believed communicate repressed desires in the form of symbolically rich stories.
For example: some analysts speculate that owning a sports car is a substitute for sexual
gratification..
 Motivational Research
Motivational Research borrowed Freudian ideas to understand the deeper meaning of
product and advertisement.
Motivational research had great appeal to at least some marketers for several reasons:
● Motivational research is less expensive to conduct than large-scale
● The knowledge a company derives from motivational research may help it develop
marketing communications that appeal to deep-seated needs
● Some of the findings seem intuitively plausible after the fact
=> The approach is most useful
some ad agencies today still use some forms of motivational research

Neo-Freudian Theories
Neo-Freudian are Freud’s colleagues and students who felt that an individual’s personality is
more influenced by how he or she handles relationships with others than by how he or she
resolves sexual conflicts.

Karen Horney
Karen Horney described people as
● compliant: moving toward others (are more likely to gravitate toward name-brand
products)
● detached: away from others (are more likely to be tea drinkers)
● aggressive: against others (preferred brands with a strong masculine orientation)
Other well-known neo-Freudians include:
● Alfred Adler proposed that a prime motivation is to overcome feelings of inferiority
relative to others
● Harry Stack Sullivan focused on how personality evolves to reduce anxiety in social
relationships

Carl Jung
He went on to develop analytical psychology:
● believed that the cumulative experiences of past generations shape who we are
today
● proposed that we each share a collective unconscious, a storehouse of memories we
inherit from our ancestors
These shared memories create archetypes which involve themes, such as birth, death, or
the devil.
Jung’s ideas may seem a bit far-fetched, but advertising messages do in fact often include
archetypes.
For example: Young & Rubicam (Y&R), a major advertising agency, uses the archetype
approach in its BrandAsset® Archetypes model.
Trait Theory
The Big Five Personality Traits
The most widely recognized approach to measuring personality traits is the so-called
Big Five (also known as the Neo-Personality Inventory). This is a set of five
dimensions that form the basis of personality:
● openness to experience,
● conscientiousness,
● extroversion,
● agreeableness,
● neuroticism
Problems with Trait Theory in Consumer Research
Because consumer researchers categorize large numbers of consumers according to
whether they exhibit various traits, we can apply this approach to segment markets

However, marketing researchers simply have not been able to predict consumers’
behaviors on the basis of measured personality traits. These are some logical
explanations for these less-than-stellar results:

● Many of the scales are not sufficiently valid or reliable

● Psychologists typically develop personality tests for specific populations
● Often marketers don’t administer the tests under the appropriate conditions
 ● In many cases, marketers ask consumers to respond to a large number of scales
with no advance thought about how they will relate these measures to
consumer behavior
Brand Personality
A brand personality is the set of traits people attribute to a product as if it were a person
Brand storytelling emphasizes the importance of giving a product a rich background to
involve customers in its history or experience.
Brand storytelling is based on the tradition of reader-response theory, which focuses on the
role of the reader in interpreting a story rather than just relying upon the author’s version.
Anthropomorphism refers to the tendency to attribute human characteristics to
objects or animals.
We may think about a cartoon character or mythical creation as if it were a person and even
assume that it has human feelings.
Ex: Chester Cheetah from Pringles

Forging a successful brand personality often is key to building brand loyalty.

Marketers who are able to create brand resonance cement a bond with the consumer
that is very difficult to break. This occurs when a brand truly speaks to some aspect
of a consumer’s individual life or the culture in which he or she lives.

Types of brand resonance:

We use some personality dimensions to compare and contrast the perceived characteristics of
brands in various product categories, including these:
• Old-fashioned, wholesome, traditional
• Surprising, lively, “with it”
• Serious, intelligent, efficient
• Glamorous, romantic, sexy
• Rugged, outdoorsy, tough, athletic
Consumers appear to have little trouble assigning personality qualities to all sorts of
inanimate products
Ex: Whirlpool
Lifestyles and Consumer Identity

A lifestyle defines a pattern of consumption that reflects a person’s choices of how to spend his or her
time and money, and these choices are essential to define consumer identity.

Lifestyle defines a pattern of consumption that reflects a person’s choices of how to spend his or her
time and money.

Figure 7.2 HOW U.S. CONSUMERS ALLOCATE THEIR TIME

Thus, people, products, and settings combine to express a consumption style, as Figure 7.3
diagrams.
Product Complementarity and Co-Branding Strategies

Many products and services do seem to “go together”

Product complementarity occurs when the symbolic meanings of different products relate to one
another.

Consumers use these sets of products we call a consumption constellation to define, communicate,
and perform social roles.

Psychographics

Psychographics go beyond simple demographics to help marketers understand and reach different
consumer segments.

Buyer Personas

When marketers combine personality variables with knowledge of lifestyle preferences, they have a
powerful lens they can focus on consumer segments. It’s common to create a fictional profile of a
“core customer” who inspires product design and communications decisions.

Marketers refer to these profiles as buyer personas.

Psychographics involves the “use of psychological, sociological, and anthropological factors . . .

Demographics allow us to describe who buys, but psychographics tells us why they do.

How We Perform a Psychographic Analysis

Psychographic studies take several different forms:

• A lifestyle profile

• A product-specific profile

• A general lifestyle segmentation study

• A product-specific segmentation study

AIOs

A as Activities, I in Interests, and O for Opinions

Typically, the first step in conducting a psychographic analysis is to determine which
lifestyle segments yield the bulk of customers for a particular product.

Psychographic techniques help marketers to identify their heavy users. Then they
can better understand how they relate to the brand and the benefits they derive from
it

· Define the target market

· Create a new view of the market

· Position the product

· Better communicate product attributes

· Develop product strategy

· Market social and political issues

Marketers constantly search for new insights so they can identify and reach groups of
consumers united by common lifestyles. To meet this need, many research
companies and advertising agencies develop their own lifestyle segmentation
typologies.

International VALS presents country-specific frameworks based on cultural

differences between attitudes and behaviors in different countries
Values

A value is a belief that some condition is preferable to its opposite.

A person’s set of values plays an important role in consumption activities.

Consumers purchase many products and services because they believe these
products will help to attain a value-related goal.

Core Values

In many cases, values are universal.

What sets cultures apart is the relative importance, or ranking, of these universal
values. This set of rankings constitutes a culture’s value system.

Not every individual will endorse these values equally; in some cases, values may even
seem to contradict one another.

It is usually possible to identify a general set of core values that uniquely define a
culture.
Some analysts argue that our focus on acquiring physical objects is shifting a bit
toward the consumption of experiences instead.

Culture values?

We term the process of learning the beliefs and behaviors endorsed by one’s own
culture enculturation.

The process of learning the value system and behaviors of another culture is called
acculturation.

Socialization agents, including parents, friends, and teachers, impart these beliefs to
us.

The Value of Materialism: Are You What You Own?

We can think of marketing as a system that provides certain standards of living to

consumers. To some extent, then, the standards of living we expect and desire
influence our lifestyles.

Our possessions play a central role in our lives, and our desire to accumulate them
shapes our value systems.

Materialism refers to the importance people attach to worldly possessions.

One study found that when people who score high on this value fear the prospect of
dying, they form even stronger connections to brands.Another study reported that
consumers who are “love-smitten” with their possessions tend to use these
relationships to compensate for loneliness and a lack of affiliation with social
networks.

Some prominent marketers are subtly shifting their emphasis from bragging rights
and toward providing other benefits to prospective owners.

Provenance: Shoppers are willing to pay more for an item when they know exactly
where it comes from, and they are assured that “real people” have thoughtfully
selected the things from which they choose.

Of late one important trend that runs counter to materialism is minimalism. This
label describes a simple lifestyle, with an emphasis on getting rid of things you don’t
need.
A few hardy souls even commit to living off the grid, without access to creature
comforts such as electricity and indoor plumbing. Decluttering has become an
obsession for many, and an art form that followers revere for its Zen-like flavor.

They explicitly decide on enacted norms.

They discover these crescive norms as they interact with others.

· A custom

· A more

· A convention

All three types of crescive norms may jointly define a culturally appropriate behavior.

These norms vary across cultures.

Much of what we know about these norms we learn vicariously as we observe the
behaviors of actors in television commercials, sitcoms, print ads, and other media.
That reminds us why the marketing system is such an important element of culture.

How Do Values Link to Consumer Behavior?

Values drive much of consumer behavior.
Virtually all consumer research ultimately relates to identifying and measuring values.
Several values affect consumer behavior:
● cultural values
● consumption-specific values
● product-specific values

The Rokeach Value Survey

The Rokeach Value Survey also includes a set of instrumental values; actions we need to
take to achieve the terminal values which apply to many different cultures.
Marketing researchers have not widely used the Rokeach Value Survey because our society
is evolving into smaller and smaller sets of consumption microcultures within a larger culture,
each with its own set of core values
For example: in the United States, a sizable number of people focus on natural health
practices and alternative medicine. This influences many of their behaviors.

The List of Values (LOV)

The List of Values (LOV) scale identifies nine consumer segments based on the values
members endorse and relates each value to differences in consumption behaviors.
These segments include consumers who place priorities on such values as:
● a sense of belonging
● excitement
 ● warm relationships with others
● security
For example: People who endorse the sense-of-belonging value are older and more likely to
read Reader’s Digest and TV Guide. While, those who endorse the value of excitement are
younger and prefer Rolling Stone magazine.

The Means–End Chain Model

The means–end chain model assumes that people link specific product attributes to terminal
values.
Using laddering helps consumers climb up the “ladder” of abstraction that connects
functional product attributes with desired end states.
Based on consumer feedback, hierarchical value maps that show how specific product
attributes get linked to end states

Syndicated Surveys
A number of companies track changes in values through large-scale surveys and sell the
results of these studies to marketers.
Today, many other syndicated surveys also track changes in values
It helps Advertising agencies stay on top of important cultural trends and shape the
messages they craft for clients, such as the GlobalScan (operated by the advertising agency
Backer Spielvogel Bates