Consumer Behavior - Personality and Attitudes

Introduction to Consumer Behavior: Personality & Attitudes

Consumer Behavior Topics

  • Decision-making

  • Motivation

  • Learning & Information Processing

  • Personality & Attitudes

  • Perception

  • Income & Social Class

  • Family, Household & Situational Influences

  • Group Influences & Social Media

  • Cultural Influences

Outcomes

  • Describe personality and its relevance in consumer behavior.

  • Understand theoretical viewpoints of consumer personality.

  • Define attitudes and their structural composition.

  • Learn the formation and changing of consumer attitudes.

Overview of Consumer Personality

  • Definition: Characteristics that distinguish one individual from another; a dynamic organization inside a person creating characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings.

  • Fundamental Characteristics:

    • Consistent and enduring.

    • Reflects consumer similarities and differences.

Personality Traits

  • Lion: Leaders, decisive, bottom-line oriented, problem-solvers.

    • Negatives: Impatient, blunt, poor listeners, impulsive.

  • Otter: Exciting, love to talk, motivating, networkers, attention-seeking.

    • Negatives: Chatter endlessly, ignore details, disorganized, impulsive.

  • Golden Retriever: Empathetic, patient, team players, compassionate, loyal.

    • Negatives: Indecisiveness, slowness to initiate, fear change.

  • Beaver: Analytical, slow-paced, task-oriented, detail-focused, diplomatic.

    • Negatives: Hyper-focus on minute details, overly cautious, avoid risk.

Personality Traits

  • Internal, personal, non-visible characteristics that distinguish people and determine behavior patterns.

  • Shaped by both genetics and environment.

Theories of Personality

  • Trait Viewpoint: Individuals remain the same throughout their lives due to consistent qualities (traits).

Allport’s Trait Theory

-Identifies over 4,000 traits categorized into three main sub-groups:

  • Cardinal Traits: Rare, dominating, define a person.

  • Central Traits: Form basic personality foundations.

  • Secondary Traits: Related to attitudes or preferences, appear in specific situations.

Cattell’s Source Theory

  • Reduced traits to 16 key personality traits using factor analysis.

  • Each person contains all 16 traits to a certain degree.

    • 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire is widely used.

  • Examples:

    • Abstractedness: Imaginative versus practical

    • Apprehension: Worried versus confident

    • Dominance: Forceful versus submissive

    • Emotional stability: Calm versus high-strung

Five-Factor Model of Personality

  • Proposed by Robert McCrae and Paul Costa.

  • Five broad traits:

    • Neuroticism (N): Anxiety, moodiness, emotional instability.

    • Extraversion (E): Sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness.

    • Openness to Experience (O): Imagination, insight, broad interests.

    • Agreeableness (A): Trust, kindness, altruism.

    • Conscientiousness (C): Thoughtfulness, impulse control, goal-directed behavior.

Application in Marketing

  • Marketers link consumer traits to products/services.

  • Create offerings that appeal to the interplay of these traits.

Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

  • Sigmund Freud: Personality stems from the structural model of the psyche.

    • Id: Unconscious, impulsive, primal urges (pleasure principle).

    • Ego: Deals with reality, controls id urges (reality principle).

    • Superego: Ideals and values, strives for moral behavior (morality principle).

Application in Marketing

  • Marketers influence the superego indirectly, modifying consumer behavior.

  • Target each element individually or steer the id away from pleasure-seeking.

Attitudes

  • The way people feel, think, or behave towards something.

  • Positive or negative evaluations that are relatively long-lasting.

Characteristics of Attitudes

  • Object-specific, learned, predispositions to respond, have valence/direction, and strength.

Tri-Component Model/ABC Model of Attitudes

  • Attitudes are determined by beliefs, feelings, and behavioral intentions.

    • Affective Component: Feelings towards attitude objects.

    • Behavioral Component: Intentions to behave in a certain way.

    • Cognitive Component: Knowledge and perception of attributes.

Attitude Formation & Change

  • Influenced by:

    • Direct Experience: First-hand experience, resistant to change.

    • Social Contacts: Family, friends, peer groups.

    • Marketing & Media: Promotional materials.

Attitude Change

  • Changing the Affective Component: Influence feelings/emotions.

  • Changing the Behavioral Component: Encourage behavior through promotions, samples, coupons.

  • Changing the Cognitive Component: Change knowledge and beliefs.

Key Takeaways

  • Personality and attitudes shape consumer behavior.

  • Marketers use insights to segment markets and develop targeted campaigns.

  • Understanding attitude formation helps create persuasive messages.