CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

WEEK 2
PERSONALITY, VALUES & LIFESTYLE

Personality, a combination of specific traits or characteristics

 Helps distinguish consumers based on the specific characteristics each exhibits

 Interactions with situations influence behaviour
 A person’s underlying characteristics are but one part of the puzzle
 The importance of situational influencers

Personality as the totality of thoughts, emotions, intentions, tendencies, and behaviours that a
person exhibits consistently as he or she adapts to the environment. (Babin & Harris, 2018,
p.112)

personality is… integrated, unique, overt; consistent and enduring, and can change over time.

Marketers are interested in determining individual difference variables to determine why

consumers value different things…
Main ones: personality, lifestyle, values

Predict a person’s emotional, behavioural and cognitive patterns in addition to their

psychological health, political leanings, career choices and the quality of their
relationships
(Funder, 2001).

THE BIG FIVE

 Widely recognised approach

 5 factor model, set of 5 dimensions that are said to form the basis of personality
 Multiple-trait perspective,
 Multiple-trait approach, combinations of traits are examined and the total effect of the
collection of traits is considered

https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test

OVERARCHING APPROACHES TO PERSONALITY:

1) Psychoanalytic approach to personality, Freudian Theory, Motivational Research &

Neo Freudian theories
2) Trait approach to personality, trait theory and multi-trait theory

 Psychoanalytic approach to personality

 Personality results from a struggle between inner motives and societal pressures to
follow rules and expectations
 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.
 Healthy individuals manage to balance between the superego and the ID
In terms of marketing…
 Highlights the importance of unconscious mental processes in influencing behaviours/
purchases.
 Ego relies on symbolism in products to compromise between the id and the superego
 This is the connection between product symbolism and motivation:
 A product represents a consumer’s true goal, which is socially unacceptable.
 By acquiring the product, the person experiences the forbidden fruit
 People channel unacceptable desires into acceptable outlets
e.g. alcohol and cigarettes

 Links to hedonistic pleasure, sex, and everything the superego represents to make
products desirable

Motivational Research – Psychoanalytic

 Borrowed Freudian ideas to understand the deeper meanings of products and

advertisements – with a heavy emphasis on unconscious motives
 Assumed that we channel socially unacceptable needs into acceptable outlets including
product substitutes.
 Depth interviews and focus groups
 Based on the assumption that the respondent cannot immediately articulate his or her
latent or underlying motives
 Focuses on interpretations of unconscious motives

e.g., snapchat – a temporary social outlet – you choose who to interact w/

snapchat was used for procrastination and distraction as opposed to other outlets that are
solely focused on communication
associated w/ higher feelings of jealousy than other outlets

 Less expensive to conduct than large-scale, quantitative survey data collection

 The knowledge may help companies develop marketing communications that appeal
to deep-seated needs

 Research lacked sufficient rigor and validity because the interpretations are so
subjective
 Generalisability of results to a larger market
 The original motivational researchers were heavily influenced by orthodox Freudian
theory - their interpretations usually involved sexual themes
 Overlook other plausible causes for behaviour

Neo Freudian Theories – grounded w/ Freud’s ideas

An individual’s personality is more influenced by interpersonal relationships with others,

than by how he or she resolves sexual conflicts.

 Karen Horney - Moving toward others (compliant), away from others (detached), or
against others (aggressive)
 Alfred Adler - Motivation to overcome inferiority relative to others
 Harry Stack Sullivan - Personality evolves to reduce anxiety in social relationships

Trait Theory, a trait is any distinguishing, relatively enduring personality characteristic.

 Trait theory is a significant departure from the earlier Freudian theories. Traits are
enduring facets of personality.
 Focuses on the quantitative measurement of personality traits, the identifiable
characteristics that define a person.

Single trait theory -

criticism,

 Personality traits traditionally have not been shown to be strong predictors of consumer
behaviour relative to other explanatory variables.

 Many of these scales are not sufficiently valid or reliable.

 Personality tests are often developed for specific populations, but they are
frequently applied to particularly any consumer group.
 Researchers often make changes in the instruments to adapt them to their own situations
and needs – dilute the validity of the measures and also reduce researchers’ ability to
compare results across consumer samples

Multiple Trait Approach

 Multiple-trait approach is concerned with a number of personality traits together and how
they combine to effect consumption. E.g. Big 5 Factor Structure (McCrae and Costa,
1990).
 Multi-trait approaches have been used to enable prediction of behaviour, since they
offer a more detailed and complex picture of the relationships between personality and
behaviour.
 The "Big Five" (also known as the Neo-Personality Inventory) of personality are five
broad dimensions/traits of personality, which have been empirically discovered. These 5
factors represent the underlying structure of all personality traits (McCrae and Costa,
1990).

BIG 5 – OCEAN, openness to

experience; conscientiousness;
extroversion; agreeableness and
neuroticism
HYPER PERSONALISATION

 Item to item collaborative filtering; behavioural targeting to provide

accurate recommendations on what you’d like –
has increased Amazon sales by 35% across the board

 personalised recommendations; group us w/

recommendations based on the moves we
like and watch
 80% of Netflix users follow recommendations, only 20% search
up their own content.

BRAND PERSONALITY

 Brand personality – human personality traits that are applicable

to and relevant for brands
 Brand personality is stronger if these elements are deliberately co-ordinated and if the
personality is kept consistent over time

Aaker (1997)
 Brand Personality Scale (BPS) which covers 44 personality types

 FIVE broad personality dimensions

1. Sincerity (agreeableness)
2. Excitement (extraversion)
3. Competence (conscientiousness)
4. Sophistication (openness)
5. Ruggedness (neuroticism?)

Links to the OCEAN traits…

 Doesn’t
have to be mutually
exclusive
 Most
brands would range
from 2-3 to avoid
being too complex.

World’s most
powerful brands (Interbrand, 2021) – in order,

e.g. Apple says they are: friendly,

easy-going, stylish, cool, intuitive,
innovative and casual.
In terms of Aaker’s model –
excitement, sophistication, and
competence

BRAND ANTHROPOMORPHISM

 Trying to humanise the brand in any way

BRAND PERSONALITY
 Presents opportunities for companies to differentiate their products
 Creates and communicates a distinctive brand personality stands out from its competition
 Provide marketers with opportunities to build strong brand relationships with consumers -
brand loyalty
 Have strong degrees of favourability, originality, and clarity
 Understand their customer’s personality

LIFESTYLE

“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” (Solomon, 2020, p.
262)

 Lifestyle and personality are interlinked

 Lifestyle is a result of our personality and experiences

Great example of a lifestyle brand: Harley Davidson

Lifestyle Marketing Perspective

 Identify the set of products and services that consumers associate with a specific
lifestyle
 We must look at patterns of behaviour to understand consumers
 We must see how customers make choices in a variety of product categories
 Many products and services seem to go together - the same
types of people tend to select them
 Meshing of products from different categories to express a
single lifestyle
 Co-Branding
AIOs

 Psychographic techniques
use quantitative methods
that can be used in
developing lifestyle profiles
 Group consumers according to
some combination of three
categories of variables: Activities,
Interests, and Opinions.
 Leads to development of

Customer Persona

 Marketing tool to help marketers segment their

audiences


VALUES

A belief that some condition is preferable to its opposite

 Universal values (e.g. health, wisdom, world peace)

 The relative importance, or ranking, of these universal values sets cultures apart
 This set of rankings constitutes a culture’s value system
 A general set of core values uniquely define a culture
 Values evolve over time

 a lot of brands start off w/ specific

values
 e.g., innocent smoothies,
successful brand based around
doing good.
  identifies 9 consumer segments based on the
values members endorse

VALS

Groups divided based on personality traits

and key demographics

Segmentation system based on responses to

a questionnaire featuring 4 demographic and
35 attitudinal questions, continually updated
with 80,000 surveys a year

Often customised by culture