Definition of Personality

Personality

The word ‘personality’ derives from the Latin word ‘persona’ which means ‘mask’. The study of personality can be understood as the study of ‘masks’ that people wear. These are the personas that people not only project and display, but also include the inner parts of psychological experience, which we collectively call our ‘self ’.

The Nature of Personality

In our study of personality, three distinct properties are of central importance:

Personality reflects individual differences.

Personality is consistent and enduring.

Personality can change.

Personality Reflects Individual Differences

An individual’s personality is a unique combination of factors; no two individuals are exactly alike.

Personality is a useful concept because it enables us to categorize consumers into different groups on the basis of a single trait or a few traits.

Personality is Consistent and Enduring

Marketers learn which personality characteristics influence specific consumer responses and attempt to appeal to relevant traits inherent in their target group of consumers.

Even though an individual’s personality may be consistent, consumption behavior often varies considerably because of psychological, socio-cultural, and environmental factors that affect behavior.

Personality can Change

An individual’s personality may be altered by major life events, such as the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, a divorce, or a major career change.

An individual’s personality also changes as part of a gradual maturing process.

Personality stereotypes may also change over time.

There is a prediction, for example, that a personality convergence is occurring between men and women.

Personality Perspectives

The different approaches or perspectives to personality are:

Biological

Psychoanalytic

Dispositional

Learning

Humanistic

Cognitive

Theories of Personality

There are three major theories of personality we need to discuss in this lesson. They are:

Freudian theory.

Neo-Freudian personality theory.

Trait theory.

Freudian Theory

Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality is the cornerstone of modern psychology. This theory was built on the premise that unconscious needs or drives, especially biological and sexual drives, are at the heart of human motivation and personality.

Id, Superego, and Ego

The Id is the “warehouse” of primitive and impulsive drives, such as: thirst, hunger, and sex, for which the individual seeks immediate satisfaction without concern for the specific means of that satisfaction. Superego is the individual’s internal expression of society’s moral and ethical codes of conduct.

The superego’s role is to see that the individual satisfies needs in a socially acceptable fashion.

The superego is a kind of “brake” that restrains or inhibits the impulsive forces of the id.

Ego is the individual’s conscious control which functions as an internal monitor that attempts to balance the impulsive demands of the id and the socio-cultural constraints of the superego. Freud emphasized that an individual’s personality is formed as he or she passes through a number of distinct stages of infant and childhood development. These distinct stages of infant and childhood development are: oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital stages. An adult’s personality is determined by how well he or she deals with the crises that are experienced while passing through each of these stages.

Structure of Mind: Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego

As mentioned above Freud came to see personality as having three aspects, which work together to produce all of our complex behaviors: the id, the ego and the superego. As you can see, the Ego and Superego play roles in each of the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious parts of the mind. All 3 components need to be well balanced in order to have good amount of psychic energy available and to have reasonable mental health.

Freudian Theory and Product Personality

Those stressing Freud’s theories see that human drives are largely unconscious, and that consumers are primarily unaware of their true reasons for buying what they buy. These researchers focus on consumer purchases and/or consumption situations, treating them as an extension of the consumer’s personality.

Neo-Freudian Personality Theory

Several of Freud’s colleagues disagreed with his contention that personality is primarily instinctual and sexual in nature. They argued that social relations are fundamental to personality development. Alfred Adler viewed human beings as seeking to attain various rational goals, which he called style of life, placing emphasis on the individual’s efforts to overcome feelings of inferiority. Harry Stack Sullivan stressed that people continuously attempt to establish significant and rewarding relationships with others, placing emphasis on efforts to reduce tensions.

Karen Horney focused on the impact of child-parent relationships, especially the individual’s desire to conquer feelings of anxiety. She proposed three personality groups: compliant, aggressive, and detached. Compliant individuals are those who move toward others—they desire to be loved, wanted, and appreciated. Aggressive individuals move against others—they desire to excel and win admiration. Detached individuals move away from others—they desire independence, self-sufficiency, and freedom from obligations. A personality test based on the above (the CAD) has been developed and tested. It reveals a number of tentative relationships between scores and product and brand usage patterns. It is likely that many marketers have used some of these neo- Freudian theories intuitively.

Trait Theory

Trait theory is a significant departure from the earlier qualitative measures that are typical of Freudian and neo-Freudian theory. It is primarily quantitative or empirical, focusing on the measurement of personality in terms of specific psychological characteristics called traits. A trait is defined as any distinguishing, relatively enduring way in which one individual differs from another. Selected single-trait personality tests increasingly are being developed specifically for use in consumer behavior studies. Types of traits measured include:

Consumer innovativeness — how receptive a person is to new experiences.

Consumer materialism — the degree of the consumer’s attachment to “worldly possessions.”

Consumer ethnocentrism — the consumer’s likelihood to accept or reject foreign-made products.

Researchers have learned to expect personality to be linked to how consumers make their choices, and to the purchase or consumption of a broad product category rather than a specific brand.

Personality & Consumer Diversity

Marketers are interested in understanding how personality influences consumption behavior because such knowledge enables them to better understand consumers and to segment and target those consumers who are likely to respond positively to their product or service communications.

Consumer Innovativeness and Related Personality Traits

Marketing practitioners must learn all they can about consumer innovators—those who are likely to try new products. Those innovators are often crucial to the success of new products. Personality traits have proved useful in differentiating between consumer innovators and non-innovators.

Personality traits to be discussed include:

Consumer innovativeness.

Dogmatism.

Social character.

Need for uniqueness.

Optimum stimulation level.

Variety-novelty seeking.

Consumer Innovativeness

How receptive are consumers to new products, new services, or new practices?

Recent consumer research indicates a positive relationship between innovative use of the Internet and buying online.

Dogmatism

Dogmatism is a personality trait that measures the degree o rigidity an individual displays toward the unfamiliar and toward information that is contrary to their established beliefs. Consumers low in dogmatism are more likely to prefer innovative products to established ones. Consumers high in dogmatism are more accepting of authority- based ads for new products.

Social Character

Social character is a personality trait that ranges on a continuum from inner-directed to other-directed. Inner-directed consumers tend to rely on their own “inner” values or standards in evaluating new products and are innovators. They also prefer ads stressing product features and personal benefits. Other-directed consumers tend to look to others for direction and are not innovators. They prefer ads that feature social environment and social acceptance.

Social character is a personality trait that ranges on a continuum from inner-directed to other-directed. Inner-directed consumers tend to rely on their own “inner” values or standards in evaluating new products and are innovators. They also prefer ads stressing product features and personal benefits. Other-directed consumers tend to look to others for direction and are not innovators. They prefer ads that feature social environment and social acceptance.

These people avoid conformity are the ones who seek to be unique!

Optimum Stimulation Level

Some people prefer a simple, uncluttered, and calm existence, although others seem to prefer an environment crammed with novel, complex, and unusual experiences. Persons with optimum stimulation levels (OSL s) are willing to take risks, to try new products, to be innovative, to seek purchase-related information, and to accept new retail facilities. The correspondence between an individual’s OSL and their actual circumstances has a direct relationship to the amount of stimulation individual’s desire. If the two are equivalent, they tend to be satisfied. If bored, they are under stimulated, and vice versa.

Variety-Novelty Seeking

This is similar to OSL. Primary types are variety or novelty seeking. There appear to be many different types of variety seeking: exploratory purchase behavior (e.g., switching brands to experience new and possibly better alternatives), vicarious exploration (e.g., where the consumer secures information about a new or different alternative and then contemplates or even daydreams about the option), and use innovativeness (e.g., where the consumer uses an already adopted product in a new or novel way).

The third form of variety or novelty seeking—use innovativeness— is particularly relevant to technological changes. Consumers with high variety seeking scores might also be attracted to brands that claim to have novel or multiple uses or applications. Marketers, up to a point, benefit from thinking in terms of offering additional options to consumers seeking more product variety. Ultimately, marketers must walk the fine line between offering consumers too little and too much choice. The stream of research examined here indicates that the consumer innovator differs from the non-innovator in terms of personality orientation.

Cognitive Personality Factors

Market researchers want to understand how cognitive personality influences consumer behavior. Two cognitive personality traits have been useful in understanding selected aspects of consumer behavior. They are:

Need for cognition.

Visualizers versus Verbalizers.

Need for Cognition

This is the measurement of a person’s craving for or enjoyment of thinking. Consumers who are high in NC (need for cognition) are more likely to be responsive to the part of an advertisement that is rich in product-related information of description. They are also more responsive to cool colors. Consumers who are relatively low in NC are more likely to be attracted to the background or peripheral aspects of an ad. They spend more time on print content and have much stronger brand recall. Need for cognition seems to play a role in an individual’s use of the Internet.

Visualizers versus Verbalizers

Visualizers are consumers who prefer visual information and products that stress the visual. Verbalizers are consumers who prefer written or verbal information and products that stress the verbal. This distinction helps marketers know whether to stress visual or written elements in their ads. From Consumer Materialism to Compulsive Consumption

Consumer Materialism

Materialism is a trait of people who feel their possessions are essential to their identity. They value acquiring and showing off possessions, they are self centered and selfish, they seek lifestyles full of possessions, and their possessions do not give them greater happiness.

Fixated Consumption Behavior

Somewhere between being materialistic and being compulsive is being fixated with regard to consuming or possessing. Like materialism, fixated consumption behavior is in the realm of normal and socially acceptable behavior. Fixated consumers’ characteristics include – 1. A deep (possibly: “passionate”) interest in a particular object or product category. 2. A willingness to go to considerable lengths to secure additional examples of the object or product category of interest. 3. The dedication of a considerable amount of discretionary time and money to searching out the object or product. This profile of the fixated consumer describes many collectors or hobbyists (e.g., coin, stamp, antique collectors, vintage wristwatch, or fountain pen collectors).

Compulsive Consumption Behavior

Compulsive consumption is in the realm of abnormal behavior. Consumers who are compulsive have an addiction; in some respects, they are out of control, and their actions may have damaging consequences to them and those around them.

Brand Personality

It appears that consumers tend to ascribe various descriptive “personality-like” traits or characteristics—the ingredients of brand personalities—to different brands in a wide variety of product categories. A brand’s personality can either be functional (“provides safety”) or symbolic (“the athlete in all of us”).

Brand Personification

A brand personification recasts consumers’ perception of the attributes of a product or service into the form of a “humanlike character.” It seems that consumers can express their inner feelings about products or brands in terms of association with a known personality. Identifying consumers’ current brand-personality link or creating one for new products are important marketing tasks. There are five defining dimensions of a brand’s personality (“sincerity,” “excitement,” “competence,” “sophistication,” and “ruggedness”), and fifteen facets of personality that flow out of the five dimensions (e.g., “down-to-earth,” “daring,” “reliable,” “upper class,” and “outdoors”).

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. It appears that blue appeals particularly to male consumers. Yellow is associated with “novelty,” and black frequently connotes “sophistication.” 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. In contrast, fine dining restaurants tend to use sophisticated colors like gray, white, shades of tan, or other soft, pale, or muted colors to reflect fine leisurely service. Consumers’ like or dislike for various colors can differ between countries.

Self and Self-image

Self-images, or “perceptions of self,” are very closely associated with personality in that individuals tend to buy products and services and patronize retailers with images or “personalities” that closely correspond to their own self-images. Such concepts as one or multiple selves, self-image, and the notion of the extended self is explored by consumer behavior researchers.

The Makeup of the Self-Image

A person has a self-image of him/herself as a certain kind of person.

The individual’s self-image is unique, the outgrowth of that person’s background and experience. Products and brands have symbolic value for individuals, who evaluate them on the basis of their consistency with their personal pictures or images of themselves. Products seem to match one or more of individual’s self images; other products seem totally alien. Four aspects of self-image are:

Actual self-image—how consumers see themselves.

Ideal self-image—how consumers would like to see themselves.

Social self-image—how consumers feel others see them.

Ideal social self-image—how consumers would like others to see them.

Some marketers have identified a fifth and sixth self-image.

Expected self-image—how consumers expect to see themselves at some specified future time. “Ought-to” self—traits or characteristics that an individual believes it is his or her duty or obligation to possess. In different contexts consumers might select different self images to guide behavior. The concept of self-image has strategic implications for marketers.

Marketers can segment their markets on the basis of relevant consumer self-images and then position their products or stores as symbols for such self-images.

The Extended Self

Consumers’ possessions can be seen to “confirm” or “extend” their self-images. The above suggests that much of human emotion can be connected to valued possessions. Possessions can extend the self in a number of ways: Actually, by allowing the person to do things that otherwise would be very difficult or impossible to accomplish (e.g., problem-solving by using a computer). Symbolically, by making people feel better or “bigger” (e.g., receiving an employee award for excellence). By conferring status or rank (e.g., status among collectors of rare works of art because of the ownership of a particular masterpiece). By bestowing feelings of immortality, by leaving valued possessions to young family members (this also has the potential of extending the recipients’ “selves”). By endowing with magical powers (e.g., a cameo pin inherited from one’s aunt might be perceived as a magic amulet bestowing luck when it is worn).