Chapter 5 Flashcards
What is personality? How does it influence consumer behaviour?
The inner psychological characteristics that both determine and reflect how a person responds to his or her environment. Innate traits that distinguish one another. Can determine how people respond to products/promotions, preferences, and where, when and how they consume.
Three distinct properties are important when studying personality: (nature of personality)
- Personality reflects individual differences – people who share some of these can be grouped
- Personality is consistent and enduring
- Personality can change
What are the various theories of personality?
Freudian theory; Neo-Freudian theory; Trait theory
Expand and explain Freudian theory and how its used in consumer research
Unconscious drives are at the heart of human personality
• ID – primitive or impulsive needs for which individuals seek immediate satisfaction
• Superego – individuals’ internal expression of society’s moral and ethical codes
• Ego – individuals’ conscious control that balances the ID and Superego
Individuals’ personality is formed as they pass through 5 stages of infant and childhood development – oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital.
In consumer research – those who make use of Freud’s ideas think of products as extensions of personality and that people are driven by their subconscious.
Expand and explain Adler’s Neo-Freudian theory
seek to attain self-centered goals, everyone born with a sense of inferiority and strive to overcome these deficiencies and become superior over others
Expand and explain Sullivan’s Neo-Freudian theory
A lack of good interpersonal relationships results in anxiety in people and through repeated social interactions we build our self-esteem
Expand and explain Horney’s Neo-Freudian theory
child/parent relationships and the desire to conquer anxiety. Said people can be classified in three personality groups:
• Compliant – move towards others (want to be loved)
• Aggressive – move against others (want to be superior)
• Detached – move away from others (want to be independent)
Explain trait theory
- Focus on measurement of personality in terms of specific psychological traits:
- Consumer innovativeness
- Consumer materialism
- Consumer ethnocentrism
- Personality linked to broad product categories and not specific brands
Two cognitive personality factors
Need for cognition
• Enjoyment or desire of thinking
• Those high in NFC will respond more to information
• Those low in NFC will respond more to background imagery
Visualisers vs verbalisers
• Some prefer the written word, and some prefer imagery
What is consumer materialism and what do materialists value?
• Materialism – the extent to which a person is considered materialistic
• Distinguishes between those who regard possessions as essential to their identities and those for whom possessions are secondary
• Materialists:
o Value showing off possessions
o Selfish
o Want many things
o Possessions don’t increase levels of happiness
What is fixated consumption behaviour
• Fixated on certain products or categories of products
• Show characteristics:
o Passionate about product/product category
o Willing to go to great lengths to acquire products/more products of same type
o Dedication of a lot of time
Explain consumer ethnocentrism and how do marketers exploit it
- Ethnocentric consumers don’t want to buy foreign products in case the economy is harmed
- Targeted by stressing nationalistic themes
- CETSCALE – consumer ethnocentrism scale
Explain cosmopolitanism
• Considers the world to be their marketplace and are consciously attracted to different cultures’ products
What do neo-Freudians believe?
Social relationships fundamental to the formation and development of personality
