Personality Type & Consumer Behavior

“Personality type and its effect on Consumer Behavior” | | | | Submitted by: Ashu Gurtoo| 09bshyd0186| Project Proposed: “Personality type and its effect on consumer behavior” Description of the project: We will first try to understand what is consumer behavior What do we really want to study when we say that we want to study consumer behavior? * Why consumers make the purchases that they make * What factors influence consumer purchases * Why people behave as they do What are the mental processes involved * Who buys * What are their choice criteria * When do they buy * How do they buy * Likely buyers reaction to marketing strategy The marketing concept stresses that a firm should create a marketing mix that satisfy the customers, therefore the firms need to analyze what, where, why and how customers buy. Understanding consumer behavior is essential to the development of marketing strategies-especially pricing, product design, segmentation, targeting, positioning and promotion.There are various theories that explore the various drives that impel consumers towards their choice * Psychological model – focus on motives for buying and process of learning * Sociological models—Consumer behavior is determined by social forces that act upon them * Economic models – focus on the consumer as a self interested utility maxi miser- intent on maximizing enjoyment from his/her purchases * Stimulus response models – composite models taking into account a variety of factors including stimuli from marketing What are the various stages one goes through when one plans to buy some thing? Problem recognition * Information search * Emergence of range of alternatives * Evaluation of alternatives * Purchase decisions * Purchase * Post purchase evaluation Review of literature: Consumer decision making style can be defined “as a mental orientation characterizing a consumer’s approach to making choices”(Sporles and Kandall,1986,p. 267). Sproles and Kendall(1986) view this construct as “basic consumer personality”, analogous to the concept of personality in psychology (p. 268).
Research on this construct can be categorized into three main approaches: the consumer typology approach (Darden and Ashton, 1974; Moschis 1976); the psychographics/lifestyle approach (lastovicka, 1982;Wells, 1975); and the consumer characteristics approach(Sproles, 1985;Sproles and Kendall, 1986; Sproles and Sporles, 1990). The unifying theme among these three approaches is the tenet that all consumers engage in shopping with certain fundamental decision making modes or styles including rational shopping, consciousness regarding brand, price and quality among others.Parenthetically, the focus on this topic seems to be an American preoccupation since no studies could be located from researchers in other countries. Objective of the project: As the world becomes commercially more integrated the customers around the world have unprecedented amount of choices this makes the buying behavior more and more complex. The abundance of choices in the retail environment makes the completion between the sellers very intense. If that was not enough the ever new means of advertisement and readily available information on various goods make the buying decision even more complex.The purpose of this research is to investigate the decision making profile of consumers and to link it with their respective personality types.
This investigation can help in understanding the consumer’s shopping behavior. Advertisers and marketers can use such profiles to segment consumers into viable and profitable clusters. Armed with such knowledge, marketers and advertisers can better advertise their products. The big 5 rating scale: The big five rating scale which is also referred to as the OCEAN model of personality rates people on the 5 major dimensions of the human personality these are Openness to Experience/IntellectHigh Scorers: Tend to be original, creative, curious, and complex Low Scorers: tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative Conscientiousness High Scorers: tend to be reliable, well organized, self disciplined, careful Low Scorers: tend to be disorganized, undependable, and negligent Extraversion High Scorers: tend to be sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative Low Scores: introverted, reserved, inhibited, quit Agreeableness High Scores: tend to be good natured, sympathetic, forgiving, and courteous Low Scores: tend to be critical, rude, harsh, and callousNeuroticism High Scores: tend to be nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying Low Score: tend to be calm, relaxed, secure, and hardy On the basis of this big five scale we will classify people into 10 categories which will be Dimension | Score | Openness to Experience| H/L| Conscientiousness| H/L| Extraversion| H/L| Agreeableness| H/L| Neuroticism | H/L| The identification will be done on the basis of the Questionnaire which will be provided to the respondents. The Questionnaire is provided at the end of the report.After identifying the 10 personality types an attempt will be made to identify these personality types with the consumer behavior they are reflecting. Consumer Behavior: To identify the basic consumer behavior 34 questions have been asked which cover the length and breadth of the basic things which can come to a customers mind while making a purchase these questionnaires will be given to respondents after which the technique of factor analysis will be used to identify whether these can be clubbed into any larger dominant factors.