Chapter 6: Personality, Lifestyles, and Values Flashcards
Personality
A person’s unique psychological makeup and how it consistently influences the way he or she responds to the environment
–personality construct has been hotly debated
–inconsistent behaviour
–some aspects of personality tend to be relatively stable
Freudian Systems
1) Id
2) Ego
3) Superego
Id
Component of the self entirely oriented toward immediate gratification. It is the “party animal” of the mind. It operates according to the pleasure principle
- Selfish and illogical
- Directs a person’s psychic energy toward pleasurable acts without any regard for consequences
Please Principle
Behaviour is guided by the primary desire to maximize pleasure and avoid pain
Superego
Counterweight to the Id
- Basically someone’s conscience
- It internalizes society’s rules and works to prevent the id from seeking selfish gratification.
Ego
Component of the self that mediates between the id and superego
- the fight between temptation and virtue
- It finds ways to gratify the id that will be acceptable to the outside world
How is Freud’s work relevant to consumer behaviour?
In particular, his work highlights the potential importance of unconscious motives underlying purchases. The implication is that consumers cannot necessarily tell us their true motivations for choosing a product, even if we can devise a sensitive way to ask them directly.
-also hints at the possibility that the ego relies on the symbolism in products to compromise between the demands of the id and the prohibitions of the superego
Motivational research relies on _________________ with individual consumers.
in-depth interviews
Non-Freudian (neo-freudian)
Karen Honey
Carl Jung
Karen Honey
Carl Jung
- Developed his own method of psychotherapy, which became known as analytical psychology
- This approach emphasized both the individual’s development as a creative person (his or her future) and his or her individual and racial history (his or her past) in the formation of personality
Collective unconscious
A storehouse of memories inherited from our ancestral past
-For example, Jung would argue that many people are afraid of the dark because their distant ancestors had good reason to exhibit this fear
Archetypes
universally shared ideas and behaviour patterns. Archetypes involve themes, such as birth, death, or the devil, that appear frequently in myths, stories, and dreams.
Traits
identifiable characteristics that define a person
For example, people can be distinguished by the degree to which they are socially outgoing (the trait of extroversion)
Who we are as adults comprises of ____% of how we grow up
60
Specific traits that are relevant to consumer behaviour:
1) Innovativeness (degree to which a person likes to try new things)
2) Public self-consciousness (the degree to which a person deliberately monitors and controls the image of the self that is projected to others)
3) Need for cognition (the degree to which a person likes to think about things and, by extension, to expend the necessary effort to process brand information)
Need for uniqueness
the degree to which a person is motivated to conform to the preferences of others versus standing apart from the crowd
idiocentrics
(having an individualist orientation)
allocentrics
(having a group orientation)
Differences between these idiocentrics and allocentrics include the following:
Contentment: Health-Consciousness Food Preparation Workaholics Travel and Entertainment
Contentment:
Idiocentrics score higher than allocentrics on the statement, “I am very satisfied with the way things are going in my life these days.” They are also more satisfied with their financial situations.
Health-Consciousness
Allocentrics are more likely to avoid foods that are high in cholesterol, have a high salt content, have additives in them, or have a high amount of fat.
Food Preparation
The kitchen is the favourite room of allocentrics, who spend more time preparing meals than do idiocentrics.
Workaholics
Idiocentrics are more likely to say they work very hard most of the time, and they stay late at work more often than allocentrics.
Travel and Entertainment
Idiocentrics are more interested in other cultures and travelling than are allocentrics. They are also more likely to go to movies, art galleries, and museums.
Public self-consciousness example
For instance, consumers high in public self-consciousness are more likely to avoid products with negative associations (e.g., men won’t choose a steak called the “ladies’ cut”16 and are more likely to donate to a charity in public settings if it looks like they are doing it for altruistic, other-focused reasons)
Lifestyle
refers to a pattern of consumption that reflects a person’s choices of how he or she spends time and money.
–the way he or she has elected to allocate income
–or in terms of their broad patterns of consumption
A lifestyle marketing perspective
recognizes that people sort themselves into groups on the basis of the things they like to do, how they like to spend their leisure time, and how they choose to spend their disposable income.
Psychographics
use of psychological, sociological, and anthropological factors . . . to determine how the market is segmented by the propensity of groups within the market—and their reasons—to make a particular decision about a product, person, ideology, or otherwise hold an attitude or use a medium
Psychographic studies can take several forms:
LIFESTYLE PROFILE
PRODUCT-SPECIFIC PROFILE
GENERAL LIFESTYLE SEGMENTATION
PRODUCT-SPECIFIC SEGMENTATION,
LIFESTYLE PROFILE
which looks for items that differentiate between users and non-users of a product
PRODUCT-SPECIFIC PROFILE
which identifies a target group and then profiles these consumers on product-relevant dimensions
GENERAL LIFESTYLE SEGMENTATION
in which the respondents in a large sample are placed into homogeneous groups based on similarities in their overall preferences
PRODUCT-SPECIFIC SEGMENTATION
in which questions used in a general approach are tailored to a product category (e.g., in a study done specifically for a stomach medicine, an item such as “I worry too much” might be rephrased as “I get stomach problems if I worry too much”; this allows the researcher to discriminate more finely between users of competing brands)
AIOs
Activities, interests, and opinions
The psychographic variable used by researchers in grouping consumers
Psychographic segmentation can be applied in a variety of ways:
TO DEFINE THE TARGET MARKET TO CREATE A NEW VIEW OF THE MARKET TO POSITION THE PRODUCT TO BETTER COMMUNICATE PRODUCT ATTRIBUTES .TO DEVELOP OVERALL STRATEGY TO MARKET SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES.
Brand Personality
Set of traits people attribute to a product as if it were a person
Brand Equity
The extent to which consumers hold strong, favourable, and unique associations with a brand in memory
Animism
Inanimate objects are given qualities that make them somehow alive
Two types of animism can be identified to describe the extent to which human qualities are attributed to a product:
–Level 1: the object is associated with a human individual
–Level 2:Objects are anthropomorphized—given human characteristics
Brand Personality
Anthropomorphization
Geodemography
Analytical techniques that combine 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.
“Birds of a feature flock together”
Values
A belief that some condition is preferable to its opposite
–Values are central to what makes a consumer distinct in their consumption and in society
–Two people can believe in the same behaviour (e.g., vegetarianism), but their underlying belief systems may be quite different (e.g., animal activism versus health concerns)
