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Personality
Definition of Personality:
“It is the relatively stable organisation of a person’s motivational disposition arising from the interaction between biological drives and the social and the physical environment”.
“The total pattern of characteristics ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that constitutes the individual’s distinctive method of relating to the environment”.
There are a number of theories currently dominating the research scene, these are as follows:
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Theories of Self and Self-Concept:
According to this theory consumers choose products that are
consistent with their perception of themselves. It further explains
that we all have a ‘Real Self (the way a person sees himself) and
an ‘Ideal Self’ ( what a persons aspires to be).
Stimulus-response theory:
Its origin dates back to work done by Pavlov. Significant contributors in this field are Skinner, Thorndike, etc. Personality is described as “A conglomerate of habitual responses acquired over time to specific and generalised cues”.
Psychoanalytic theory: Freud emphasied the unconscious
aspect of personality. Freud describes personality as a set of
three forces: ID, EGO, SUPEREGO. The interaction among
these three variables determine our behavior.
Social Theory: Social theorist such as Alfred Adler did not
agree with Freud’s emphasis on the biological nature of personality instead he has provided us with concepts of ‘Superiority’ and ‘Compensation’. According to Adler during our childhood we all suffered from feelings of inferiority complex therefore most of our efforts later on in life are spent on getting over that feeling and strive for superiority.
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Trait and Type approach.
While all these theories are important the subsequent discussion
mainly concentrates on ‘Trait’ and Type approach. In the day
to day language Traits are adjectives that we use to describe
individuals. For instance: My father is industrious, my neighbour is very polite and so on. These traits make each one of us unique
and different to each other.
Starting the discussion with a study conducted by Evans (1959).
Evans studied two cars (i.e. Ford and Chevrolet). Two groups
were formed based on differences created in personality images
of these cars by advertising. Ford owners were described as ‘Independent and Masculine’
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And Chevrolet owners as ‘thrifty and conservatives’ On the basis of these personality traits Evans tried to predict car (brand) ownership. The success rate was 63% in the first instance.
Westfall: (1960) in his study could not repeat these results.
Tucker and Painter (1961) studied the relationship between use of headache remedies, alcoholic drink, smoking and personality variables. It was founded that personality traits were strongly related to 13 out of possible 36 combinations.
Koponen:- (1960) found ‘smoking’ to be positively related to traits such as sex dominance, aggression and achievement amongst males.
Cohen (1968) discovered that there were no significant differences amongst personality.
Psychoanalytic Theory
It is a set of ideas about personality, personality structures
three parts:
These are ID, EGO, SUPEREGO.
ID: Contains our basic lusts and desires.
EGO:- The rational element which channels the urges of ‘ID’
into socially-acceptable behavior.
SUPEREGO:- Our conscience. In a constant conflict with ‘ID’
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The whole scenario has been descried as:
Man is essentially a battlefield. He is a dark cellar in which a
maiden aunt and sex-crazed monkey are locked in a moral
combat, the affair being refereed by a rather nervous bank
-clerk.
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Eysenck et.al (1961) found smoking to be positively related to extroversion.
All the above-mentioned studies were selected to highlight the confusing picture projected by current research of personality in predicting consumer behavior. For instance: do cigarette manufacturers have enough grounds to segment cigarette market based on personality? As indicated above, some studies show a positive relationship while others show no relationship at all. These studies, conducted by different researchers using different scales as often yielded contradictory as similar results and therefore, instead of explaining the relationship led to further confusion.
(Kassarjian 1971)
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Some problems associated with these studies:
1) These studies tried to link traits to specific behavior i.e. buying therefore, forgetting that traits under consideration were not general and not linked to any specific behavior.
2) Kassarjian (1971) points out that scales used to measure very often were changed to suit interest or requirement of the researchers. Items were either added on or discarded and words were changed, consequently leaving the validity and reliability of the test in doubt.
3) Researchers did not consider the conditions under which they were conducting these studies. For instance a number of studies had housewives or students as their subjects and instead of conducting interviews in controlled environment,
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They took place in classrooms or houses. This might have influenced respondents into giving socially acceptable answers.
4) The names given to different personality traits on various personality scales though were same yet the traits often described were different.
Recent Research
More recently there have been other approaches that have avoided repeating the above-mentioned mistakes and have provided better and more reliable results.
One such approach as a result of this awareness is ‘Trait and Type’ theory. Instead of relying on a single trait, this approach builds up personality profiles that are a combination of several personality traits.
Continued
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For example: figure that follows depicts a continuum of personality traits with innovativeness on the one end and adaptiveness on the other end. These are two personality types that have been formed as a result of a number of studies in the past. These studies have indicated that several traits combined together are responsible for their formation.
Adaptiveness Innovativeness
- Traits - Traits
- Dogmatic - Flexible
- Conservative - Assertive
- Shy - Impulsive
- Practical - Extrovert
- Tender - Adventurous
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Measures of Personality
Questionnaires:/
*Minnesota Multiphasic personality Inventory.
*Gordon Personal Profile
*Edwards Personal Preference Schedule
*Projective techniques: such as sentence completion, story completion etc aimed at discovering inner feeling.
Summary: Although theoretically we have reasons to believe that personality traits are very useful when segmenting markets yet on a practical level we require more evidence to be convinced.