Chapter 6

Personality and Psychographics

CONSUMER
BEHAVIOR, 10e
Michael R. Solomon

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 Chapter Objectives
When you finish this chapter, you should
understand why:
1. A consumer’s personality influences the way he
or she responds to marketing stimuli, but efforts
to use this information in marketing contexts
meet with mixed results.

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 Chapter Objectives
When you finish this chapter, you should
understand why:
2. Psychographics go beyond simple
demographics to help marketers. understand
and reach different segments.
3. Consumer activities can be harmful to
individuals and to society.

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 Learning Objective 1
• A consumer’s
personality influences
the way he or she
responds to marketing
stimuli, but efforts to
use this information in
marketing contexts
meet with mixed
results.

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 Personality
“A person’s unique psychological makeup and
how it consistently influences the way a person
responds to his or her environment.”
Personality is the relatively stable traits that
makes an individual unique.

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Big Five personality traits

Extraversion: This trait includes characteristics

such as excitability, sociability, talkativeness,
Boldness and high amounts of emotional
expressiveness.
Agreeableness: This personality dimension
includes attributes such as trust, self-sacrifice
kindness and affection

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 Conscientiousness: Common features of this
dimension include high levels of thoughtfulness,
with good desire control and goal-directed
behaviors, organized and mindful of details.
Emotional stability: Individuals high in this
trait tend to experience emotional stability, Not
anxious, less moodiness, less irritability, and
sadness.

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 Openness to experience: This trait features
characteristics such as imagination and insight,
broad range of interests, adventurism

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 Personality and Freudian Theory

Primitive Drive Reality Beliefs - Morals, Ethics

Freudian Systems
Id:
Immediate
Gratification
Ego: Superego:
Mediator
Pleasure System that
Principle: internalizes
To maximize society’s rules
pleasure and
avoid pain
 Freudian Theory
• Id is the immature, selfish part of our
selves which motivates us to treat in
pleasures and satisfy base desires
• Super ego is the society’s moral code or
ethics
• Ego is the rational force of our brain
which tries to find a balance between the
conflicting forces of Id and Super ego

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Ads targeting Id
Ads targeting the ego
Ads targeting the Super Ego
 Freudian Theory
• Market Researchers use Freud’s theories to understand
unconscious motives underlying purchases.
• Product symbolism and motivation where the ego relies on
symbolism to compromise desires with ethics.
• Sexuality of products
• (cars as sheet metal crossed with desire)
• (tunnels as symbols of womanhood)
• Use of phallic symbols that appeal to women (cigars,
trees, swords as symbols of manhood)
• Motivational Research
(in-depth interviews into person’s purchase motivations)

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 Trait Theory
• Quantitative measurement of traits:
• Extroversion/introversion
• Innovativeness
• Materialism
• Self-consciousness
• Need for cognition
• Need for uniqueness (conformity)
• Idiocentric (individualist ) vs. Allocentric (group)
• Used to create “brand personalities”
• Marketers have been unsuccessful to predict consumer
behaviour on traits alone.

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 Trait Theory
• Extroversion/introversion Trait theory
focuses on the quantitative measurement of
personality traits. Personality traits are the
identifiable characteristics that define a person.
For instance, we might say that someone is an
introvert or an extrovert.
• Innovativeness is the degree to which a
person likes to try new things.

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 Trait Theory
• Materialism is the amount of emphasis a
person places on acquiring and owning
products.
• Self-consciousness is the degree to
which a person deliberately monitors and
controls the image of the self that he or
she projects to others.

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 Trait Theory
• The need for cognition is the degree to
which a person likes to think about things
and by extension, expends the necessary
effort to process brand information.

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 Brand Personality
• Brand Equity: the extent to which a consumer holds in
memory strong, favourable, and unique associations with a
brand.
• Animism: Giving animate( bring to life). qualities to
inanimate objects to bring them to life.
• Communication of a brand personality is one of the
primary ways marketers can make a product stand out
from competitors and inspire brand loyalty.

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 Psychographic Studies
• Lifestyle profiles looks for items that
differentiate between users and nonusers of a
product

• Product-specific profiles profile identifies a

target group and then profiles these consumers
on product-relevant dimensions
.

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 Psychographic Studies
• General lifestyle segmentation places a large
sample of respondents into homogenous
groups based on similarities of their overall
preferences

• Product-specific segmentation study tailors

questions to a product category

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 Lifestyles & Psychographics
• Lifestyle:
A pattern of consumption reflecting a person’s choices
of how he or she spends time and money.
• Lifestyle marketing perspective
• People sort themselves into groups on the basis of the
things they like to do, how they like to spend leisure
time, and how they spend disposable income.
• Group identities gel around forms of expressive
symbolism.
• Lifestyle Marketing positions products into existing
patterns of consumption (consumption styles).

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 Lifestyles & Psychographics
• Psychographics
• Uses psychological, sociological, and
anthropological factors to segment a
market into groups based on their
reasons to make a particular decision.
• AIOS: activities, interests, and opinions.
• 80/20 rule: 80% of volume comes from only 20%
of the market.

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 Psychographic Segmentation Uses
• To define target market
• To create new view of market
• To position product
• To better communicate product attributes
• To develop product strategy
• To market social/political issues

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 Lifestyles & Psychographics
• Psychographic Uses:
• Position product
• Communicate product attributes
• Develop overall strategy
• Market social and political issues
• VALS
• Values and Lifestyles segmentations system
• Divides people into 8 groups based on psychological
traits and resources

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 Lifestyles & Psychographics
• VALS segments
• Innovators (successful with many resources)
• Thinkers - satisfied, reflective, comfortable
• Achievers - career-oriented preferring predictability over
risk or self-discovery
• Experiencers – impulsive, young and enjoy offbeat or
risky experiences.
• Believers – strong principles and favour proven brands.
• Strivers – achievers with fewer resources.
• Makers – action-oriented focused on self-sufficiency
• Strugglers – primary concern is meeting the needs of the
moment

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 Geodemography
• Geodemography involves using data on
consumer expenditures and other
socioeconomic factors with geographic
information about the areas in which people live
to identify consumers who share common
consumption patterns

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 For Reflection
• Construct separate advertising executions for a
cosmetics product targeted to the Belonger,
Achiever, Experiencer, and Maker VALS types.
• How would the basic appeal differ for each
group?

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 For Reflection
• Geodemographic techniques assume that
people who live in the same neighborhood have
other things in common as well.
• Why do they make this assumption, and how
accurate is it?

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 Learning Objective 3
• Consumer activities
can be harmful to
individuals and to
society.

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 Dark Sides
• Consumer terrorism
• Addictive consumption
• Compulsive consumption
• Consumed consumers
• Illegal activities

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 For Reflection
• Give two examples of consumer addiction.
• Should marketers play a role in helping
consumers avoid the dark side?

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 Chapter Summary
• Consumer personality influences the way
one responds to marketing stimuli
• Lifestyles are an important aid to many
marketing strategies
• Psychographics go beyond simple
demographics to help marketers
understand different consumer segments
• Identifying patterns of consumption are
valuable components of a lifestyle
marketing strategy
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