Personality, Lifestyle, and Values

Freudian Theory

Sigmund Freud: our adult personality stems from a fundamental conflict between our desires to gratify physical needs and the necessity to function as a responsible member of society

id > the “party animal”; maximize pleasure and avoid pain

superego > our conscience; internalizes society’s rules as taught to us

ego > the mediator; tries to balance opposing forces according to the reality principle (you have to do what you have to do “societally,” go to school/work, etc.)
- The system that acts as a referee between temptation and virtue, according to Freud, is called the ego

Neo-Freudian Theories

Work that has been influenced by Freud

Neo-Freudian Theories > scientists believe our personalities are more influenced by how we handle relationships with others

Archetypes

Archetypes: universally recognized ideas and behavior patterns

e.g., old wise men, Mother Nature

Brand Asset Archetypes model = proposes healthy and unhealthy relationships among archetypes

• A healthy personality occurs when archetypes prevail

• An unhealthy personality occurs when shadows prevail

How does this translate to brands?

Characteristics

Shadow Characteristics

Trait Theory

Personality Traits: identifiable characteristics that define a person

Some crucial traits for marketing settings

• Need for uniqueness

• Need for affiliation

• Introversion/Extroversion

• Attention to social comparison information

• Frugality

Mindset Media (Marketing Research Companies)

TV shows that you watch can offer marketers insights into your personality and brands you prefer

The Big Five (Personality Traits)

Most widely recognized approach to measuring personality traits

Personality Tests

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator = widely used personality test (especially by employers)

But…there are problems

It makes sense then that marketers would want to target products to consumers with specific personality traits

But, research methods have been met with mixed success

Perhaps it’s better to focus on…

Brand Personalities

Brand Personality: set of traits people attribute to a product as if it were a person

Brand Storytelling: emphasizes the importance of giving a rich background to involve consumers in the brand’s history or experience

One popular genre for brand storytelling is underdog brand biography

For any brand’s personality, authenticity is key

Common Brand Personalities

Sincerity – Liberty Mutual, State Farm

Excitement – Red Bull, Nike

Competence – Microsoft, Google

Sophistication – Audi

Ruggedness – Harley Davidson

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism: tendency to attribute human characteristics to objects or animals

Strategies that make brands more anthropomorphic:

1. Speaking in the first person

2. Imitating human faces

3. Fictitious or real human names

Lifestyles

Lifestyle: a pattern of consumption that reflects a person’s choices on how to spend time and money

Marketers use the lifestyle marketing perspective,

recognize that people sort themselves into groups based on

• What they like to do

• How they like to spend their free time

• How they choose to spend disposable income

A key aspect to lifestyle marketing is to focus on people who use products in desirable social settings

Product Complementarity & Co-Branding

It’s important to identify sets of products/services that consumers associate with a particular lifestyle

e.g., fast food and paper plates, suit and tie, Halloween costumes and candy

Co-branding strategies: companies work together to promote 2+ items

• Sometimes a brands’ mascots will join forces in ads

Product complementarity: when symbolic meanings of different products relate to one another

• Consumers use these sets of products to create a product constellation to define, perform, and communicate specific social roles

Psychographics

Psychographics: involves the use of psychological, sociological, and anthropological factors to determine how the market is segmented

• Focus is on the reasons why an individual makes a particular decision about a product, person, ideology

• Investigates consumers’ motivations for purchasing/using products

How are psychographics different from demographics?

Demographics tell us who buys and psychographics tell us why they buy
It is possible to use psychographics to identify distinct segments even for mundane products such as soap.

Psychographic Analysis

Most research attempts to group consumers according to some combination of activities, interests, and opinions > AIOs

First step if so determine which lifestyle segments yield the most customers for a product (think 80/20 rule)

What can marketers do with this information?

AIO Dimensions

Values

Value: what is preferred over other alternatives

Two people can believe in and exhibit the same behaviors but for very different underlying belief systems

e.g., vegetarianism

We purchase items believing it will help us attain a value-related goal

Core Values

Some values are universal

e.g., health, wisdom, world peace

Value systems > different cultures have different rankings or relative importance to universal values

e.g., Western cultures value independence more and Eastern cultures value interdependence more

Each culture has a general set of core values that uniquely define the culture

e.g.,

We learn our own culture’s beliefs through enculturation

We learn about other cultures’ beliefs through acculturation

Norms

From values flow norms which tell us what is right or wrong, acceptable/unacceptable in our society

Encated Norms > norms that are explicit

e.g., the rule that green in a traffic light means go, red means stop

Crescive Norms > more subtle, discovered as we interact with others

1. Custom – controls basic behaviors

2. More – custom with a strong moral undertone (often involves taboo)

3. Convention – how we conduct our everyday lives (the “correct” way to host parties, style our clothes, furnish our place)

Culturally appropriate behavior

Each of the three crescive norms jointly define a culturally appropriate behavior

• A more may tell us what food is okay to eat

• A custom dictates when appropriate time to eat

• Conventions tell us how to eat (i.e., table etiquette, utensils used)