Marketers are interested in understanding how personality affects consumer behavior. Consumer innovators, who are open to trying new products and services, are often targeted. Personality traits related to innovativeness include stimulation seeking, novelty seeking, and need for uniqueness. Consumer dogmatism measures a person's openness to new information without bias. Social character determines if a consumer is inner-directed in their judgments or looks to others. Those seeking uniqueness avoid conformity. Sensation seeking and optimum stimulation level influence risk-taking and preferences for novel experiences. Variety seeking impacts exploratory purchases, information gathering, and using products in new ways.

1. Personality and Consumer behavior
Marketers have always been interested in understanding and attempting to
answer how personality affects an individual’s consumption behavior as this helps
them to understand customer and eventually target those customers who would
respond favorably and positively to their product/service offered.
Customer Innovativeness and Related Personality Traits
Consumer innovators – those that are open to new products and the first in
the market to try new products/services are the ones marketing practitioners
generally try to learn about. Some of the personality traits used to differentiate
customer innovators from non-innovators would be
Customer Innovativeness
Consumer Dogmatism
Social Character
Need for Uniqueness
Optimum Simulation level
Sensation Seeking
Variety and Novel seeking
Customer Innovativeness
Over the years, the trait of customer innovativeness has been linked to
stimulation, novelty seeking and need for uniqueness. Various research studies on
innovation adoption process in first discontinuous innovations like personal
computers, video recorders have the following features.
They are opinion leaders.
They are tolerant towards risks.
They are oriented form inside and independent from the norms of the
belonging groups.
They prefer getting informed by mass media rather than oral communication.
They are open to new idea and changes.
They are cosmopolites.
They have a higher socio-economic standard.
Innovativeness can be useful in the following scenarios
To identify and target people who are open to new product categories.
Used as an important consideration for brand extensions.

2. Consumer Dogmatism
Marketers, especially those of technologically rich products, are always
keenly interested in managing consumer responses to distinctively unfamiliar
products or product features. Consumer dogmatism is the extent to which a person
can react to information that is relevant and can judge the product/service according
to its own merits without being encumbered by irrelevant factors. Given below are
some of the traits of low dogmatic and high dogmatic personalities.
Low Dogmatic Individuals Highly Dogmatic Individuals
Prefer Innovative products to More likely to choose established products.
traditional/established alternatives.
More receptive to messages that stress factual More receptive to ads for new products/services.
differences, product benefits and other forms of
product-usage info.
Ads focus more on product information rather Marketer uses celebrities and experts for their
than on anything else like celebrity endorsement, new product offerings.
etc.
Social Character
Buying behavior/patterns of an individual also depends on the character of
the individual, whether the person evaluates the product based on his own
judgment, assumption, values or standards or he tends to look to others for
guidance.
The ad given below targets an inner-directed consumer. Here the ad targets woman
who are self conscious about their body and the ad implies
them to take call to have a cigarette instead of a sweet.
The best example that illustrates ads that targets individuals
who look for other’s guidance would be Apple’s “If you don’t
have an IPhone ad”. The ad literally tells people that they are
missing out on the IPhone revolution if they haven’t bought it
yet.
Needforuniqueness
For people seeking to be unique, conformity to other’s
expectations/standards in appearance/possessions is something they would avoid.
Some of the characteristics of people seeking uniqueness.
Collecting unusual products.
Daring to be different despite of other’s criticism.
Abandonment of a product/brand when it is very popular amongst masses.

3. Always on the lookout for one-of-a-kind product to create a more distinctive
personal image.
Optimum Simulation Level
Some people prefer a simple, uncluttered and calm existence while others
prefer an environment with novel, complex and unusual experiences. People with
high optimum simulation levels have the following characteristics.
Greater willingness to take risks
Trying new products
Being innovative in purchases
Seeking purchase related information and being open to new retail facilities.
Studying the optimum simulation level helps manufactures and retailers in
understanding consumer preferences and ensures that consumers do not change
their brand by launching variants of brands (e.g. cigarettes, toothpastes). It also
helps in identifying the ideal product offering for the consumer once his/her OSL has
been determined. (E.g.) Holiday plans for customers based on their lifestyle.
Sensation Seeking
This is similar to OSL concept, where consumers are characterized by the
need to for varied, novel and complex experiences and willingness to take physical
and social risks for the sake of such experience.
Variety or Novel seeking
There are three consumer seeking variety – exploratory purchase (switching
brands to experience new, different and possibly better alternatives), vicarious
purchases (securing new information about new/difference alternatives and
contemplating whether to buy or not) and use innovativeness (using an already
adopted product in a new or novel way).
Examples of exploratory purchase and vicarious purchases would be the purchase of
FMCG products like soaps, shampoos, biscuits.
Use innovativeness is used for promoting technological products, in which some
products have more features than the rest. Customers who seek products with many
features can be targeted to sell these products.
References
1. Consumer Behavior by Leon G. Schiffman, Leslie Lazar Kanuk
2. Personality Trait Theory and Consumer Behavior by Ruby Roy Dholakia