Personality
Personality is the relatively long-lasting personal quality that allow as to respond to the world around us. Personalities, therefore are meaningful to consumer and thus of importance to marketing manager. It is the personality of the consumer which guide and directs the behavior chosen to accomplish goals in different situation. It can be defined as a consistent pattern of responses to the world across situation and overtime. it is an internalized system which include all the aspects of a person that are inherited as well as those that are learned. Personality is the composite sum of an individual traits, characteristics motive, attitude, belief and outlook.
There are two broads new on development of personality.
- State Approach to personality - This approach advocates that an individual should be understood as a whole. Here the focus is on understanding the individual response tendencies under variety of condition. This approach takes into account external influence like family, group, peers, and cultural e.tc on an individual behavior.
- Trait Approach to personality – Personality traits are consistent tendencies to respond to a given situation in certain ways. The fundamental assumption of trait theory is that all individual share the same trait though they are exhibited at different levels for different groups resulting in different personalities.
Personality & Consumer Behavior
The association between consumer behavior and personality may be stronger for some consumer than for others. Certain type of personality traits may be more related to consumer behavior that others. We take the following influence: -
- Optimal Stimulation level (OSL) – Some activities have the potential to provide us with some sort of physiological arousal. Those with high stimulation needs are likely to be the innovators, seek information about new products and engage in variety seeking behavior.
- Dogmation – Consumer can also vary in terms of how open or closed minded they are. Dogmation refers to an individual tendency to be more resistant to change and new idea. Different group consider different level of arousal as optimal.
- Need for cognition – Individual may vary in terms in terms of how much pleasure they derive from effortful thinking, deliberating and contemplating. Consumer who enjoys thinking about things like products, attributes and benefits would be high in need of cognition. Those who are low need for cognition do not like to deliberate much and prefer shortcut.
- Susceptibility to Influence – Some consumer has a greater desire to enhance their image as observed by others and therefore is willing to be influenced or guided by them. Also, consumer with low social and information processing confidence tends to be more influenced by ads.
- Self-monitoring behavior – Individual differ in degree to which they look to others for cues on how to behave. High self-monitor is typically sensitive to the desire and influence of others to guide their own behavior and low self-monitor are guided more by their own preference and desire and are less influenced by normative expectation.
Self-Concept
Self-concept is a narrower dimension of personality. It has become a popular concept in recent years to investigate possible relationship between how individual perceive them and how they behave as consumer. It can be defined as the totality of an individual thought and feeling having reference to him as an object. Basically, one's self concept is comprised of the attitude one holds toward one self.
The self-concept is broadly divided in two parts are –
- Actual and Ideal - Actual refers to who I am now and Ideal refers to who I would like to be.
- Private and Social component - The private self refers to how I would like to be myself and how I am and social self pertains to how I am seen by others and how I would like to be seen by others.
Role of self-concept in Marketing
Marketing uses self-concept to design their marketing strategies. The relationship between self-concept and product purchase can be logically explained with the help of following sequence.
- An individual has a self-concept.
- One's self concept is valuable to oneself.
- Since self-concept is valuable an individual always strives to enhance it.
- Certain product serves as social symbol and communicates social meaning about those who own and use such products.
- The use of product as symbols communicates meaning to one's self and to others.
Certain products therefore are brought because they project a desired self-concept. The brand purchased must match the self-concept of the consumer to result in satisfaction. In brief we can say that individual have of themselves actual and ideal; private and social serve as a guide for many products and brand choice. As marketer strives to develop new product and new appeal for customer they need to keep in mind this important variable. Basically, consumer prefers brands that are similar to their self-concept.
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