Chapter 6 Personality and Lifestyles

1. Chapter 6Personality and Lifestyles

2. Personality • Personality: a person’s unique psychological makeup and how it consistently influences the way a person responds to his/her environment

3. Freudian Systems Personality = conflict between gratification and responsibility • Id: pleasure principle • Superego: our conscience • Ego: mediates between id and superego • Reality principle: ego gratifies the id in such a way that the outside world will find acceptable

4. Freudian Systems (cont.) Marketing Implications • Unconscious motives underlying purchases • Symbolism in products • Sports car as sexual gratification for men • Phallic symbols, such as cigars • Latent motives for purchases • Dichter’s motives (see table)

5. Dichter’s Consumption Motives

6. Motivational Research (cont.) • Criticisms • Usually invalid or hard to believe • Too sexually-based • Appeal • Less expensive than large-scale surveys • Powerful hook for promotional strategy • Intuitively plausible findings (after the fact) • Enhanced validity with other techniques

7. Neo-Freudian Theories • Karen Horney • Compliant versus detached versus aggressive • Alfred Adler • Motivation to overcome inferiority • Harry Stack Sullivan • Personality evolves to reduce anxiety • Carl Jung • Collective unconscious • Archetypes in advertising (old wise man, earth mother, etc.)

8. BrandAsset Valuator Archetypes

9. BrandAsset Valuator Archetypes (cont.)

10. Trait Theory • Personality traits: identifiable characteristics that define a person • Some Traits relevant to consumer behavior: • Individualism • Self-consciousness • Self-esteem • Need for cognition • Frugality • Extraversion • Willingness to take risk • Emotionality • Others???

11. Idiocentric vs. Allocentric

12. Lifestyle/Personality Variables for Soup

13. Problems with Trait Theory • Prediction of product choices using traits of consumers is mixed at best • Scales not valid/reliable • Tests borrow scales used for the mentally ill • Inappropriate testing conditions • Ad hoc instrument changes • Low correlations with behavioral predictions

14. Brand Personality • Brand personality: set of traits people attribute to a product as if it were a person • Brand equity: 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

15. Brand Behaviors and Personality Inferences

16. Lifestyles • Lifestyle: patterns of consumption reflecting a person’s choices of how one spends time and money • People sort themselves into groups on the basis of: • What they like to do • How they spend leisure time • How they spend disposable income • Example: • Magazines targeting specific lifestyles: WWF Magazine, 4 Wheel & Off Road, Reader’s Digest • Lifestyle and tastes/preferences evolve over time

17. Food Cultures • Food culture: pattern of food and beverage consumption that reflects the values of a social group • Differences in international food cultures: • In China, milk chocolate has less milk • In United States, Campbell’s soup is saltier than in Mexico • In Germany, food is healthier • In the Middle East: Saltier, Halal, Kosher (kashrut) • In Japan and France: portions smaller