Personality

Personality

1. The unique, dynamic organization of characteristics of a particular person, physical and physiological, that influence behaviour and responses to the physical and social environment

   • Personality reflects individual differences
     • Personality is consistent and enduring
       • Personality can change

2. Freudian Theory: Unconscious needs lie at the heart of human motivation and personality.

   • ID: Physiological/innate needs in which the individual seeks immediate pleasure with little regard for the means. Pleasure principal.
     • SUPEREGO: Individual's internal perception of society's rights and wrongs. Seeks to restrict the primitive desires of the ego with socially acceptable norms.
       • EGO: Balances the impulses of the ID with the sociocultural constraints of superego.
         • DEFENSE MECHANISMS: When the ego can't balance the conflict between the ego and ID. i.e. Repression (selective forgetting)
   • MARKETING APPLICATIONS
     • Researchers applying Freud's theory to consumer behaviour stress the idea that consumers are relatively ambiguous as to why the purchase.

3. Trait Theory: Focusses on the identification and qualitative measurement of personality in terms of specific psychological characteristics

   • Personality can be understood by studying traits and believe in personality tests
     • We have weak and strong dimensions of our personality
       • The Big 5 Model: 1) Neuroticism - Low score = emotional stability, 2) Extroversion - low score = introversion, 3) Openness to experience - low score = doesn't like new experiences, 4) Agreeableness - low score = antagonistic, 5) Conscientiousness - low score = laid back
   • MARKETING APPLICATIONS
     • Understand consumer's propensity to engage in certain activities

4. Consumer Innovativeness

   • Ultimately, the extent to which consumer innovators are likely to buy a new product is the backbone for success of new products.
     • Consumer innovativeness provides insights into the nature and boundaries of a consumer's willingness to innovate

5. Consumer Dogmatism

   • The extent of a consumer's rigidity towards the unfamilliar or towards information that is contrary to their established beliefs
     • Highly dogmatic - less inclined to purchase new/unfamilliar products
       • Low in dogmatism - will consider purchasing new products
         • More inclined to respond to ads that stress factual product benefits
       • An authorative ad appeal will work for this group - the use of celebrities to make it easier for reluctant consumers to accept the innovation

6. SELF CONCEPT

   • Consumer's have a number fo enduring images of themselves. These images, or perceptions of self, are closely related to the personalities in which consumer's purchase their products, which closely correspond to the brands they buy and the retail outlets they choose
     • A consumer's behaviour is likely to be influenced by differing situations, thus it is believed consumer's have multiple selfs to satisfy as opposed to one.
       • MARKETING APPLICATIONS
         • Marketers should target their products and consumers within the context of a particular self
           • Products and brands have symbolic value and we evaluate them in terms of their consistency with our self image
       • ACTUAL self: how consumer's see themselves
         • IDEAL SELF: How consumer's would like to see themselves
           • SOCIAL SELF: How consumer's feel others see them
             • IDEAL SOCIAL SELF: How consumer's would like others to see them
               • EXPECTED SELF: a future orientation of "what is" and what consumers would "like to be"