ISL460U-CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Chapter 3: The Self and Personality
Introduction
Understanding the formation of self and personality as an aspect of it is important because it shows us how the market exchange mechanism operates at the social level and serves social construction. The self is used as a segmentation criterion.
The Self-Concept
Self-concept is the subjective thoughts, feelings, beliefs of a person about their own attributes and their evaluations of these attributes. Attributes that form the self can be a person’s body, family, role identities, relationships, fantasies, possessions, emotions, moods, traits, values, social positions, and other symbols.This complex structure of attributes while defining and evaluating the self can be expressed by five dimensions: content, direction, intensity, stability over time, and accuracy.
Marketers search their target markets to understand their self esteem patterns, the gap between the actual and aspired selves, multiple selves, and the conflicts among them. The subjective thoughts, feelings, beliefs of a person about his/her own attributes and the evaluations of these attributes is called self concept.
Self-Esteem the positivity of a person’s self-concept. Marketers differentiate their offerings through attaching meanings which appeal to the self-esteem of the consumer. Self-esteem forms through a comparison of a realistic understanding of the self with an ideal one.
Actual Self and Ideal Self In these different contexts, individuals sometimes define an actual or real self, and sometimes they define an ideal self they aspire to. the private context, the actual self is constructed as a more realistic understanding of one’s selfconcept. The gap between real and ideal selves can be larger or smaller from person to person. Especially people who experience larger gaps are targeted by marketers.
Multiple Selves People also do not have a single, clearly defined self. Depending on the occasions and social interactions, people construct multiple selves or multiple identities. Depending on these different selves, this person consumes different products and services to create or communicate her multiple selves.
Sometimes these different selves may conflict, and marketers may resolve it. For example, you may need to obey the mothership’s social role, and at the same time, you may need to have your professional role in the workplace. Products that help working women provide healthy and easy-to-prepare solutions would resolve the tension between the mothership and professional roles.
Theories of Self Formation
In the late capitalist period, people are very mobile; they are freed from their roots. They need to find resources to identify themselves, especially in huge cosmopolitan cities. The market provides infinite symbolic resources
(the meanings transferred through brands, advertisements, or fashion) to individuals through marketing communications and market offerings. While consuming these items, people attach the meanings goods possess to themselves or compare them with themselves. That is, consumption serves as a meaning transfer process in self- formation.
There are different conceptual approaches to understanding self-formation.
Symbolic Interactionism states that the formation of a self is due to interactions of the person with other people. This theory assumes that people live in a symbolic environment. In a society, situations, events, or objects around us gain meaning through people’s interpretations. From encounter to encounter, we continuously negotiate who we are according to our own interpretation and our perceptions of others’ interpretation of who we are.
The looking glass self and dramaturgy are two well- known metaphors used to explain the self-formation from a symbolic interactionist perspective. Looking-glass is a mirror that shows our reflection of how we expect we appear to other people. When you look at the mirror, you see yourself from others’ perspectives. Erving Goffman argues that self-formation is like a theatrical play and uses the dramaturgy perspective in explaining this impression management process.
“Authenticating Acts and Authoritative Performances Arnould and Price’s (2003) research on authoritative performances and authenticating acts aim to study the role of consumption in self-formation at two levels: 1. being a community member and 2. being an individual self. Authenticating acts are the expression of the person’s unique and true self apart from any ascribed roles that the person plays to others. The person acts from inside, not from the community, while constructing their authentic self. Consumption is utilized strategically to form a self.
The Extended Self Russell W. Belk (1988) introduced a different theory on self-formation by examining the relationships between the possessions and the sense of the self. The extended self gradually extends from the core through possessions of different categories. Four levels of the extended self are individual, family, community, and group levels. 1. Individual Level: Personal items like clothing, accessories, cars, instruments like guitar or pens are used for self-definition. 2. Family level: This second level of extended self includes the person’s house, household items like furniture. It represents the family and the identity of the person about their family. 3. Community level: Consumers describe themselves as part of a community such as a neighbourhood or a town. 4. Group level: Person’s attachment to a social group such as a sports team or, more generally, to the nation, landmarks or monuments representing national history, famous people representing the nation or athletes, or places representing the team are seen as part of the self.
Marketing and the Self
Self-formation theories show that we construct, express, and transform ourselves through consumption since items possess meanings. Consumers compare their self-image with product image, brand image, or the typical user image of a brand. Actual and ideal self-image congruence is the experience gained by comparing the consumer’s actual and ideal selves with a brand or a product user image, respectively. The social actual and social ideal self- congruencies refer to the fit between the actual and ideal selves constructed in the social context and the product or brand image. Consumers can also compare their self- images with the typical user images communicated through advertising. Retail atmospherics may also signal meanings that match with the self. Therefore, marketers need to understand the target market’s self-concept(s) and create value for their consumers by helping them construct, and express themselves, and resolve conflicts among their multiple selves.
Personality
“Personality is the sum of the qualities and characteristics of being a person”.Our innate drives, learned motives, and experiences shape our personality. Personality defines a person’s patterns of behavioral responses to the environment. Marketers expect that people with similar personalities show similar responses to marketing activities. Therefore, personality is often considered as a segmentation variable. Like lifestyle, personality is a psychographic segmentation variable.
The three main characteristics of the notion of personality:
1. Personality makes people distinct from one another, 2. It is generally consistent and stable, but 3. Rarely it may also change due to major changes in a person’s life such as a death of a parent or child, marriage, starting a new job
The three theoretical approaches which conceptualize personality are Freudian, neo-Freudian, and Trait theories.
Freudian and neo- Freudian Personality Theories Freud’s Psychoanalytical theory argues that at the base of our motivation and personality is unconscious needs and drives (e.g., sexual or other biological drives). The interactions of the id, the superego, and the ego as three systems define the personality.
During the infant and childhood development, individuals pass through five psychosexual stages: the oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital stages. An individual’s personality in adult life is shaped by how the person copes with the crises they experienced during these development stages. For example, if the infant is overfed at the oral stage of the development, the adult personality will reflect aggression and domination. On the contrary, if the infant’s food needs are not satisfied, the adult personality will
show dependence on others. The neo-Freudian perspective extends Freud’s psychoanalytical explanation by including the influence of social relationships in the formation and the development of personality. Alfred Adler, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Karen Horney are among the important names introducing this perspective.
Trait Theory Trait theory defines personality in terms of specific psychological characteristics called “traits,” which are individual responses to the environment, in our case, to the marketing environment. Personality tests evaluate if the individual’s score is high or low for each personality trait.The big five-factor model is frequently used to measure personality traits. This model consists of five factors as extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. Marketing research reveals that personality traits are powerful in terms of explaining the consumption of product categories. Consumer researchers utilize personality traits relevant to consumer behavior.
Brand Personality
To differentiate a particular brand from its competitors and create favorable attitudes towards the brand, marketers attach human psychological characteristics to the brand. Marketing communications, from advertising to brand storytelling, to the design of brand elements such as packaging, logo, and jingles, are used consistently to communicate a particular brand personality.
The Self and Personality Across Cultures
The specific attributes, qualities, and processes are interacting differently for each person and forming different behavior. However, in non-western cultures such as Asia, South America, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, and the south of Europe, the notion of self is interdependent..
For example, descriptions of personality traits in American culture are mainly psychological traits. However, in collectivistic cultures, social roles are used to express personality.. Across cultures, several variations of the Five-Factor Model of Personality Traits (FFM) model are used. It has a higher explanatory power than the Big Five Personality Factor.