Solomon, Consumer Behaviour - Chapter 6 Personality & Lifestyles

Doc. Dr. Azize Muge YALCIN

Consumer Behaviour

Written Report of

Personality (Chapter 6)
(Consumer Behavior – Michael R. Solomon – Ninth Edition)

By

Yusuf BULUT - Ozgun AKDIK

Fall 2011 – Spring 2012

Personality
When we say personality, actually everyone can understand what it is meant to be but actually it is hard to define a formal description of “Personality”. One answer can lie in the concept of personality, which refeers to a person’s unique psychological make up and how it concsistently influences the ay a person’s responds to his/her environment. From now on when we say “Personality”, we mean all of the distinctive, consistent and structured relations between an individual ‘s inner and outer environment. Personality is also be described as “ the particular combination of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral response patterns of an individual”
Some psychologists may argue that the concept of personality may not be valid. Many studies find that people do not seem to exhibit stable personalities. Because people do not necessarily behave the same way in all situations, they argue that this is merely a convenient way to categorize people.
It’s a bit hard to accept because we tend to see others in a limited range of situations and so they do appear to act consistently.
Marketing strategies often include some aspect of personality. These dimensions are usually considered in conjunction with a person’s choice of leisure activities, political beliefs, aesthetic tastes, and other personal factors that help us to understand consumer lifestyle.
Freudian Theories:
Who is Sigmund Freud?
Sigmund, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. An early neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy, Freud later developed theories about the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and established the field of verbal psychotherapy by creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst. Psychoanalysis has in turn helped inspire the development of many other forms of psychotherapy, some diverging from Freud's original ideas and approach. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
Sigmund Freud proposed the idea that much of one’s adult personality stems from a fundamental conflict between a person’s desire to gratify his/her physical needs and the necessity to function as a responsible member of society. The id seeks out immediate gratification. The superego is the counterweight to the id. It is a person’s conscience. The ego is the system that mediates between the two. It tries to find ways to gratify the id that are acceptable to society. This is called the Pleasure Principle.

“Id” is selfish and illogical. It is the “Party Animal” of the mind. It’s about immidiate gratification. Id operates according to the pleasure principle which our basic desire to maximize pleasure and avoid pain guides our behaviour. Id directs a person’s physical energy toward pleasurable acts without regard for any consequences. “Superego” is the counterweight to the id. The superego is essentially the person’s consicience. The superego internalizes society’s rules and tries to prevent the id from seeking selfish gratification. “Ego” mediates between the id and superego, it acts as a refree in the fight between temptation and virtue. The ego tries to balance these opposing forces according to the reality principle which means it finds way to gratify the id that the outside world will find acceptable. These conflicts occur on an unconcious level , so the person is not necessarily awere of the underlying reasons for his/her behaviour. Freud’s ideas highlights the potential importance of unconscious motives that guide our purchases.
Consumer researchers have adapted some of Freud’s ideas. Consumers cannot necessarily tell us their true motivation when they choose products, even if we can devise a sensitive way to ask them directly. The Freudian perspective also raises 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. The person channels her unacceptable desire into acceptable outlets when she uses products that signify these underlying desires. This is the connection between product symbolism and motivation: The product stands for, or represents, a consumer’s true goal, which is socially unacceptable or unattainable. By acquiring the product, the person vicariously experiences the forbidden fruit.

Phallic Symbols: are male-oriented symbolism that appeals to women. According to Freud’s idea the use of some objects that resemmble sex organs.
For example: Cigars, trees, swords, buttons,trains and cars are look alike male sex organs. In addition to those mentioned, tunnels and button holes are symbolysed as female sex organs. Most Freudian applications in marketing relate to a product’s supposed sexual symbolism. For example owning a sports car for a man going through a mid-life crysis is a substitute for sexual gratification.

Motivational Research:
Motivational research borrowed Freudian ideas to understand the deeper meanings of products and advertisements. The approach assumed that we channel socially unacceptable needs into acceptable outlets including product substitutes. Motivational Research relies on depth interviews with individual consumers instead of asking many consumers a few general questions about product usage. Motivational Researcher probes deeply into each respondents’ purchase motivations. It might take several hours and the respondent can not immediately articulate his/her latent or underlying motives. The researcher can reach these only after extensive questioning and interpretation.
Ernst Diechter was a psychoanalyst who trained with Freud’s disciples in Vienna. Dichter conducted in-depth interview studies on more than 230 products.
There are both appeals and criticism associated with motivational research. * Criticisms * Invalid or works too well * Gave advertisers the power to manipulate consumers * Research lacked sufficient rigor and validity because the interpretations are so subjective. * The analyst bases his conclusions on his own judgement after an interview with a small number of people * The doubt of if the finding would generalize to a market or not * Too sexually based because of The Orthodox Freduian Theory * Appeal * Less expensive than large-scale surveys * Powerful hook for promotional strategy * Intuitively plausible findings (after the fact) * Enhanced validity with other techniques

Motives and Associated Products

* Power-masculinity-virility: Sugar products large breakfasts, power tools – Coffee , Red meat, heavy shoes, toy guns, buying fur coats to women, shaving with a razor * Security: Ice Cream(to feel like a loved child again), Full drawer of neatly ironed shirts * Eroticism: Sweets (to lick) gloves (to be removed by women as a form of undressing) * Moral purity-cleanliness: White Bread , Cotton Fabrics , oatmeal (sacrifice, virtue) * Social acceptance: Companionship: Ice Cream
Love and Affection: Toys (to express love for children)
Acceptance: Soap Beauty products * Individuality: Foreign Cars, Vodka, Perfumes * Status: Health Problems (To show one has a high stress , important job!) Carpets (to show one does not step on ground with bare feet) * Femininity: Cakes and cookies, dolls, silk, tea, household curios (anthics) * Reward: Cigarettes, Alcohol, Candy, Ice Cream * Mastery over environment: Kitchen appliences, boats, sporting goods, cigarette lighters * Disalienation (a desire to feel connectedness to things) : Morning radio broadcast, skiing * Magic-mystery: Soups (healing power), paints (changes mood of room), unwrapping gifts
Other interpretations were hard for some researchers to swallow; such as the observation that women equate the act of baking a cake with birth, or that men are reluctant to give blood because they feel it drains their vital fluids. However, American people sometimes say a pregnant woman has “A bun in the owen”
When the Red Cross hired Ernest Diechter to boost blood donation rates he reported that men (but not women) tend to intensely overestimate the amount of blood they give. As a result the red cross, counteracted men’s fear of losing their virility when the organization symbolically equated the act of blood with fertilizing a female egg: “ The gift of life.”

Neo Freudian Theories
Alfred Adler
He was cooperating with Freud and Carl Jung but later in the Freudian Theories the emphasis on sex was not accepted by Alfred Adler. Adler called it individual psychology because he believed a human to be an indivisible whole, an individuum. He also imagined a person to be connected or associated with the surrounding world to form an independent school of psychotherapy and personality theory. Following this split, Adler would come to have an enormous, independent effect on the disciplines of counseling and psychotherapy as they developed over the course of the 20th century.
Adler emphasized the importance of equality in preventing various forms of psychopathology, and espoused the development of social interest and democratic family structures for raising children. His most famous concept is the inferiority complex which speaks to the problem of self-esteem and its negative effects on human health (e.g. sometimes producing a paradoxical superiority striving). His emphasis on power dynamics is rooted in the philosophy of Nietzsche, whose works were published a few decades before Adler's. However, Adler's conceptualization of the "Will to Power" focuses on the individual's creative power to change for the better. Adler argued for holism, viewing the individual holistically rather than reductively, the latter being the dominant lens for viewing human psychology. Adler was also among the first in psychology to argue in favor of feminism making the case that power dynamics between men and women (and associations with masculinity and femininity) are crucial to understanding human psychology. Adler is considered, along with Freud and Jung, to be one of the three founding figures of depth psychology, which emphasizes the unconscious and psychodynamic.
Caren Horney:
According to Horney; individual’s reaction to percieved real threats ,anxiety, is stronger than sexuality or libido. Individuals have ways and neurotic tendencies to cope up with emotional problems in daily life. These tendencies occur as moving towards others (compliant), away from others (detached) or against others (The aggressive). Compliant people are more likely to gravitate toward name brand products. (Celal Birsen – Turkish Umbrella Manufacturer) Detached people are more likely to be tea drinkers. Aggressive people prefer brands with a strong masculine orientation. We can clearly see that in Old Spice Commercials with Terry Crews. Another approach by Harry Stack Sullivan focused that personality evolves in both internal and external daily communicatiosn to overcome anxiety.

Carl Jung:
Carl Jung was also a disciple of Freud but their relationship ended in part because Jung did not accept Freud’s emphasis on sexual aspects of personality. Jung developed his own method psychotherapy known as analytical psychology.
He believed that we all share a collective unconscious. You can think of this collective unconscious as a storehouse of memories we inherited from our ancestors. From these shared memories, we recognize archetypes. An archetype is a universally recognized idea or behavior pattern. They typically involve themes like birth and death and appear in myths, stories, and dreams
He is the founder of Analitical Psychology He mentioned the “id” as the power source of unconscious ego. Unconscious can be classified into personal and collective unconscious. Jung believed that cummulative experiences of past generations shape who we are today(Experiences have been inherited from past generation to next generation) which is collective unconscious. People are afraid of dark because their distant anchestors had good reasons to fear it. Personal unconscious means rudimentary ideas and subdued beliefs and livings. Many psychological concepts were first proposed by Jung, including the Archetype, the Collective Unconscious, the Complex, and synchronicity. A popular psychometric instrument has been principally developed from Jung's theories.
Persona,one of the most common archetypes defined by Carl Jung, has a major factor while personality is shaped. It is the visible part of our personality by other people, it is the mask we wear during interacting in environment. The other two major archetypes are anima and animus. Anima is the feminine characteristics within a male personality, and animus is the masculine characteristics within a female personality.
BrandAsset® Valuator of Archetyes is created by BrandAsset® Consulting: A Young & Rubicam Brands Company.
The model shows the relationships among the Archetypes. For each healthy personality, there is a corresponding Shadow. A healthy personality is one in which the Archetypes overwhelm their corresponding Shadows. A sick personality results when one or more Shadows prevail. When a brand’s Shadows dominate, this cues the agency to take action to guide the brand to a healthier personality.
Agency uses the valuator to get opions of brands, keep the brand away from ome than one shoadow characteristic and move brand into a healthier positions.

BrandAsset Valuator® Archetypes

Trait Theory :
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 (quite and reserved) or an extrovert(Socially outgoing).
Some of the most relevant traits for consumer behavior are listed below * Innovativeness - is the degree to which a person likes to try new things. * 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. * 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. * Frugality - is the tendency to deny short-term purchases and to make due with what they already own.
David Reisman first introduced the terms inner-directed and outer-directed more than 30 years ago. There are several differences that exist between idiocentric (an individualist orientation) and allocentric (a group orientation) personalities. | Idiocentrics | Allocentrics | | (individualist orientation) | (group orientation) | Contentment | More satisfied with current life | Less satisfied with current life | Health Consciousness | Less likely to avoid unhealthy foods | More likely to avoid unhealthy foods | Food Preparation | Spend less time preparing food | Love kitchen; spend more time preparing food | Workaholics | More likely to work hard and stay late at work | Less likely to work hard | Travel and Entertainment | More interested in traveling to other cultures | Visit library and read more |

Problems with Trait Theory The use of standard personality trait measurements to predict product choices has met with mixed success. It is simply hard to predict consumer behavior based on personality! There are several explanations; * Scales not valid/reliable –Results may not be stable over time * Tests borrow scales used for mentally ill - marketers “borrow” those results to apply a more general population * Inappropriate testing conditions and not well trained test administers * Ad hoc instrument changes – reduces ability to compare test results across consumer samples * Use of global measures to predict specific brand purchases * “Shotgun approach” (no thought of scale application) – No specific advance knowledge about how test results is going to be conducted about purchases of specific brands.

Researchers are recognised that Trait researches can not fully describe what the purchase decision is mainly caused by but a part of it. Marketers have to incorprate personality data with information about people social and economic conditions for it to be useful.
Brand Personality
Brand personality is set of traits people attribute to a product as if it were a person. Brands borrow personality traits of individuals or groups to convey an image they want customers to form of them.
Many of the most recognizeable figures in popular culture are spokescharacters for long-standing brands, such as Mr. Muscle in Turkish advertisements.
Animism: Brands carry their energy, attractiveness and soul on products as living creatures (Quaker Oats man and their credibility are reflected to a product package so that consumers may assume producers as shrewd and fair as Quaker Oats.
Brand equity is the extent to which a consumer holds strong, favorable, and unique associations with a brand in memory—and the extent to which s/he is willing to pay more for the branded version of a product than for a nonbranded (generic) version .

Like people, brand personalities do change over time. Brands’ popularity may vary from year to year.
Herebelow it’s the most popular companies in Turkey in years 2010 and 2011. One year can make significant changes in brands equity.

http://www.businews.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/egsa50-1.jpg To give you another idea of how much things change Americans ranked these brands as the most stylish in year 1993 and 2008

Top 5 Stylish - 1993 * Levis * Nike * Bugle Boy * Guess * L.A. Gear

Top 5 Stylish – 2008 * Victoria’s Secret * Ralph Lauren * Nine West * Calvin Klein * Coach

Doppelganger Brand Image
When a company makes too many false or misguiding advertisesments, consumers can give humoristic and rebellios responses.
This may be a web site attack or a fan-made(or anti-fan) video that make fun of it on Youtube and other similar content sharing social media. This is called Doppelganger Brand Image (Which means the bad twin of that brand)
For example
Turk Telekom’s ADSL connection also known as TTNT ADSL
Logo of London 2012 Olympics. The british tabloids have been less than kind; one paper described the design as a “Toileting monkey”. Also it has got some critisism due to it symbolysis Semitic Quote to “Sion”. An anti logo group got 50000 people to sign a petition demanding that organizors change the design. Some marketing experts feel that this outcry is a good thing because most young Britons are very blase about the prospect of the Olympics taking place in their backyard. So this will get their blood pumping.
As an example of Animism; Adidas Brand creates a focus group of children and asks them to image, Adidas is going to join a party and tell them how they imagine adidas in the party. The kids responded that Adidas would be hanging around the keg with its pals, talking about girls unfortunely they also said Nike would be with the girls. The results reminded Adidas’ brand managers they had some work to do. Brand Action | Trait Inference | Brand Examples | Brand is repositioned several times or changes slogan repeatedly | Flighty, schizophrenic | Ford, Geico, Puma | Brand uses continuing character in advertising | Familiar, comfortable | Marlboro, Turkcell, Arcelik | Brand charges high prices and uses exclusive distribution | Snobbish, sophisticated | LV, Hermes, MacroCenter | Brand frequently available on deal | Cheap, uncultured | H&M | Brand offers many line extensions | Versatile, adaptable | Ipana | Brand sponsors show on PBS or uses recycled material | Helpfull, supportive | Toms, IKEA | Brand features easy to use packaging or speaks at consumer's level in advertising | Warm, Approachable | T-Box | Brand offers seasonal clearance sale | Planfull, practival | Mango, Polo Garage | Brand offers five-year warranty or free customer hotline | Reliable, Dependable | Hyundai |

The Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET)
Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) is a technique for eliciting interconnected constructs that influence thought and behavior.
It is used to measure the brand equity. This tool can help companies in creating positive associations with customers. This works most, as by talking the brand in the form of story , marketer better able to grab the attention of customers and touch their feelings.
ZMET is one tool used to asses the strategic aspect of brand personality and is based on the premise that brands are expressed in metaphores; that is, a representation of one thing in terms of another. These associations offen are non-verbal so the ZMAT approach is based on a non verbal representation of brands.
Participants collect a minimum of twelve images representing their thoughts and feelings about the topic, and are interviewed in depth about the images and their feelings. Eventually digital imaging techniques are used to create a collage summarizing these thoughts and feelings and the person tells a story about the image created.

Nestle Cerelac is the leading brand in baby food category. See how Cerelac brand equity measure through ZMET technique. By using this example, you can better able to apply this tool and increase you brand's overall worth.