personality and consumer behaviour

1. PERSONALITY
&
CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

2. WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
• The inner psychological characteristics that both determine and reflect
how a person responds to his or her environment
• This definition focus on :
 Specific qualities
 Attributes
 Factors
 Mannerisms

3. • Personality can Change:
– Under certain circumstances, personalities change
– A man’s personality changes as he matures slowly. For instance, our
personality may have changed from how it was 5 years back.
– Often, we find aggressive man mellow down as they advance in
years.
– An individual’s personality may be altered by major events such as
birth of a child, death of close one, career promotion, etc.

4. NATURE OF PERSONALITY
• Personality reflects individual differences:
 Each individual has a special set of unique characteristics and is
unique by himself.
 Some individual are highly sociable whereas some are low on
sociability.
 Consumers can then be grouped together based on this identified
personality trait
.
• Personality is consistent and enduring:
 An individual’s personality tends to be both consistent and
enduring.
 Helps in predicting consumer behaviour over a period of time in
terms of their personality

5. 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

6. 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. Our urge to ‘do what is right’ –
achieving perfection.
• Ego
– Individual’s conscious control that
balances the demands of the id and
superego
Human personality consists of three interacting systems the id, the superego,
and the ego

7. Superego
- Internalize society’s rules,
morals, ethics
- Restrains the impulsive
forces of the id
- Works contradictory to ID
Ego
-Balancing between Id
and Superego
- Tries to balance them
according to reality
principle
Id
- Warehouse of primitive
desires
- Hunger, thirst, etc
-Immediate gratifications
- No contact with reality
Eg.: If you are thirsty
At Id level, you
would grab water
from anybody having
a water bottle.
At Ego level, you
may buy a water
bottle or any other
drink.
At Superego level,
you ask the person
for water.

8. NEO-FREUDIAN PERSONALITY THEORY
• Neo Freudian’s are those who further developed Freud’s ideas but
presented new ways of looking at personality.
• Neo-Freudians believed that social relationships are fundamental to
the formation and development of Personality.
• We seek goals to overcome feelings of inferiority.
• We continually attempt to establish relationships with others to reduce
tensions.

9. Proposed three personality groups,
• Compliant move toward others, they desire to be loved, wanted,
and appreciated
• Aggressive refers to individuals being an extrovert and getting
noticed in all what he does
• Detached move away from others. They desire independence, self-
reliance, self-sufficiency, and individualism or freedom from
obligations)

10. TRAIT THEORY
• Trait theory is concerned with the construction of personality tests that
allow them to pinpoint individual differences in terms of specific traits.
• A trait is defined as any unique, comparatively continuing way in
which one individual differs from another.

11. Personality traits that have been useful in determine consumer innovators and
non-innovators.
• Innovation
The degree to which consumers are interested to new products, new
services, or new practices
• Dogmatism
Reflects the degree of strictness/rigidness a person displays towards
the unfamiliar product and information that is different to his or her
own established beliefs.
• Variety-novelty seeking
Measures a consumer’s degree of variety seeking.

12. 12
• Social Character
Inner-Directed
•Consumers who tend to rely on
their own inner values
•More likely to be innovators
•Tend to prefer ads that stress
product features and benefits
Other-Directed
•Consumers who tend to look to
others for direction
•Less likely to be innovators
•Tend to prefer ads that feature
social acceptance
• 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.

13. COGNITIVE PERSONALITY FACTORS
Need for cognition (NC)
• Consumers who are high in NC are more likely to be responsive to the
part of an ad that is rich in product-related information or
explanation;
• consumers who are relatively low in NC are more likely to be
attracted to the background or peripheral aspects of an ad, such as
an attractive model or well known celebrity.
Visualizers versus verbalizers
• Consumers who preference visual information and products that
stress the visual graphics and images.
• Verbalizers prefer visual information written or verbal information

14. HIGH NC LOW NC

15. CONSUMER ETHNOCENTRISM
• Consumer who are highly
ethnocentric are likely to feel that it
is inappropriate or wrong to
purchase foreign-made products
because of the resulting economic
impact on the domestic economy
etc.
• They take pride in using
domestically produced products.

16. SELF AND SELF-IMAGE
• A self-images, or perceptions of self, are
very closely associated with personality.
• Individuals tend to buy products and
services and support retailers whose
images or personalities relate in some
meaningful way to their own self-images.
• In real meaning, consumers seek to
represent themselves in their brand
choices-they have a tendency to approach
products with images that could enhance
their self concept and avoid those products
that do not.

17. • One or multiple selves
A single consumer will act differently in different situations or with different
people
• 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.
• Extended self
Consumer’s possessions can be seen to confirm or extend their self-images. For
instance, acquiring a desired or sought-after pair of “vintage” Levi jeans might
serve to expand a teenager’s image of self. The teenager might now see herself
as being more desirable and more fashionable.
• Altering the self- image
Clothing, grooming aids or cosmetics & all kinds of accessories (sunglasses,
jewelry, tattoos, or even colored contact lenses) offer consumers the
opportunity to modify their appearances (to create a “makeover”) and thereby
to alter their “selves.”

18. BRAND PERSONALITY
• Brand personality is as if 'making the brand come alive'.
• The attribution of human personality traits (seriousness, warmth,
imagination, etc.) to a brand as a way to achieve differentiation.
• Usually done through long-term above-the-line advertising and
appropriate packaging and graphics.
• Brand personality which is strong and favorable will strengthen a
brand but not necessarily stimulates demand
• Identifying consumers’ current brand-personality link or creating one for
new products are important marketing tasks.

19. • These traits inform brand behavior through both prepared
communication / packaging, etc. and through the people who represent
the brand - its employees.
• The way in which it speaks of its products or services shows what kind
of person it would be if it were human.
• A brand without a personality has trouble gaining awareness and
developing a relationship with customer.

20. ECONOMICAL
BEAUTY
ROUGH & TOUGH
ATHLETICS

21. A Brand Personality Framework

22. SINCERITY
Hallmark,
Kodak,
Mother Dairy
COMPETENCE
Hewlett Packard
Wall Street Journal
Bournvita
Reebok
EXCITEMENT
Pepsi,
Maggi
SOPHISTICATION
Mercedes,
BMW,
Channel
LV
RUGGEDNESS
Thumbs Up,
Marlboro,
Levis

23. Product Personality and Gender
• Assigning of a gender as part of personality description is fully
consistent with the marketplace reality that products and services, in
general, are viewed by consumers as having a “gender-being.”
• Armed with such knowledge of the perceived gender of a product or a
specific brand, marketers are in a better position to select visual and
copy-text for various marketing messages.
• Example: AXE DEO
Hero Honda Pleasure - “Why should boys have all the fun”

24. Personality and Color
• Consumers also tend to associate personality factors with specific
colors.
• In some cases, various products, even brands, associate a specific
color with personality-like connotations.
• Many fast-food restaurants use combinations of bright colors,
like red, yellow, and blue, for their roadside signs and interior
designs.
– These colors have come to be associated with fast service and
food being inexpensive.

25. Commands respect,
authority
•America’s favored color
•IBM holds the title to blue
•Associated with club soda
•Men seek products packaged in blue
Caution, novelty,
temporary, warmth,
Excitement
•Eyes register it faster
Eg: Maggi
Secure, natural, relaxed
or easy- going, living
things
•Good work environment
•Associated with vegetables and chewing gum
•Canada Dry ginger ale sales increased when it
changed sugar-free package from red to green and
white
BLUE
YELLOW
GREEN
The Personality-like Associations of Colors

26. Copyright 2007 by Prentice
Hall
Human, exciting, hot,
Love, strong
•Makes food “smell” better
•Coffee in a red can perceived as “rich”
•Eg: Coca-Cola “owns” red
• little hearts biscuits
Powerful, affordable,
informal
•Draws attention quickly
Informal and relaxed,
masculine, nature
•Coffee in a dark-brown can was “too strong” eg:
Nescafe
Goodness, purity, chastity,
cleanliness, delicacy,
refinement, formality
•Suggests reduced calories
•Pure and wholesome food
•Clean, bath products
•Eg: Toiletries
Sophistication, power,
authority, mystery
•Powerful clothing
•High-tech electronics
•Eg: Allen solly, Armani
Regal, wealthy, stately •Suggests premium price
RED
ORANGE
BROWN
WHITE
BLACK
SILVER,
GOLD

27. Product Personality and Geography
• Certain products, in the minds of consumers, possess a strong
geographical association.
• Using the geographical association can create a geographic equity.
• Eg: Banarsi sarees
• The real question is, “Does location (geography) add to the brand
image and to the product’s brand equity?”

28. From Consumer Materialism to
Compulsive Consumption
• Consumer materialism
– Materialism, as a personality-like trait, distinguishes between
individuals who regard possessions as essential to their identities
and their lives and those for whom possessions are secondary.
– The extent to which a person is considered “materialistic

29. Materialistic People
Acquire and show off
possessions
Self centered and selfish
Seek lifestyle full of
possessions
Do not get greater
personal satisfaction from
possessions
Materialistic
People

30. • Fixated consumption behavior
– Somewhere between materialism and compulsion, with respect to
buying or possessing objects, is the notion of being fixated with regard
to consuming or possessing.
– A deep interest in a particular object or product category
– a willingness to go to considerable lengths to secure items in the
category of interest
– Consumers fixated on certain products or categories of products(Barbie
dolls, coins collection)
– Do not keep their objects or purchases of interest a secret; rather, they
frequently display them, and their involvement is openly shared with
others who have a similar interest.

31. Sample Items from a Materialism Scale
• Success
– I admire people who own expensive homes, cars, and clothes
– I like to own things that impress people
• Centrality
– I like a lot of luxury in my life
• Happiness
– My life would be better if I owned certain things I don’t have
– It sometimes bothers me quite a bit that I can’t afford to buy all
the things I’d like

32. • Compulsive consumption behavior
– “Addicted” or “out-of-control” consumers
– Their actions may have damaging consequences to them and to
those around them.
– Examples : uncontrollable shopping, gambling, drug addiction,
alcoholism, and various food and eating disorders.
– To control or possibly eliminate such compulsive problems
generally requires some type of therapy or clinical treatment.

33. Sample Items from Scales to measure
Compulsive Buying
1. When I have money, I cannot help but spend part or the whole of it.
2. I am often impulsive in my buying behavior.
3. As soon as I enter a shopping center, I have an irresistible urge to
go into a shop to buy something.
4. I have often bought a product that I did not need, while knowing I
had very little money left.
5. I spend most of my money on betting, to make more money.