This document contains a summary of key concepts related to personality, psychographics, and consumer behavior. It discusses how personality influences consumer responses and marketing strategies. It also examines psychographic segmentation techniques used to understand consumer groups based on activities, interests, and opinions. Finally, it outlines some negative aspects of consumer behavior like addictive consumption, compulsive buying, and illegal activities like theft. The document provides an overview of these concepts with definitions and examples.

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2. Chapter 6: Personality and Psychographics
Summary
Objective 1
 A consumer’s personality influences the way he responds to marketing stimuli,
but efforts to use this information in marketing contexts meet with mixed results.
 Personality is an important concept which refers to a person’s unique
psychological makeup and how it consistently influences the way a person
responds to his/her environment.
 Marketing strategies often include some aspects of personality. E.g. the
characteristics of the celebrity could transfer to the brand.
 Freudian Systems- The id is about immediate gratification- it is the “party
animal” of the mind. It operates according to the pleasure principle. It is selfish,
illogical and directs a person’s energy towards pleasurable acts.
 The Superego is the counterweight to the id. This system is essentially the
person’s conscience.
 The ego is the system that mediates between the id and the superego.
 The Reality principle is that ego gratifies the id in such a way that the outside
world will find acceptable ( this is where Freudian Theory applies to marketing).
 Motivational Researchborrowed Freudian ideas to understand the deeper
meanings of products and advertisements. A motivational research identifies
consumption motives to associated products.Those motives are
power-masculinity-virility, security, eroticism, moral purity-cleanliness, social
acceptance, individuality, status, femininity, reward etc.
 Motivational research is a qualitative research approach, based on psychoanalytic
(Freudian) interpretations, with a heavy emphasis on unconscious motives for
consumption. Criticisms related to motivational research include invalid or works
too well and too sexually based. Appeals related to motivational research include
I.e. less expensive than large-scale surveys, powerful hook for promotional
strategy and enhanced validity with other techniques.
 Neo-Freudian Theories include Karen Honey and Carl Jung.
 Karen Honey described people as moving towards others (compliant), away from
others (detached) or against others (aggressive).

3.  Carl Jung includes the cumulative experiences of past generations shape who we
are today. These shared memories creates archetypes.
 Archetypes is a universally shared idea or behavior pattern, central to Carl Jung’s
conception of personality. Archetypes involve themes, such as birth, death, or the
devil, that appear frequently in myths, stories and dreams.
 Trait Theory focuses on the quantitative measurement of personality traits,
defined as the identifiable characteristics that define a person. Specific traits
relevant to consumer behavior includes innovativeness, materialism,
self-consciousness, need for cognition and frugality.
 Brand personality is the set of traits people attribute to a product as if it were a
person. Brand personalities do change over time. Forging a successful brand
personality often is key to building brand loyalty.
Objective 2
 Psychographics go beyond simple demographics to help marketers understand
and reach different consumer segments.
 Psychographics involve the use of psychological, sociological and
anthropological factors to determine how the market is segmented by the
propensity of groups within the market. E.g. social classes, activities, personality
and values, attitudes.
 In psychographics, there are the casual user, the business user and the power user.
 The casual user uses most phone features, uses phone to make calls, send texts,
takes pictures and always has his mobile device with him.
 The business user wants a simple phone that functions as integrated device,
wants to easily read email and call back sender and needs “popular” mail server
integration.
 The power user uses almost all built-in mobile functionality, extends phone
functionality with additional software and looks through and changes every
menus option.
 Psychographics forms include Lifestyle profile ( user vs non-user of a product ),
Product-specific profile ( profiles target groups on product-relevant
dimensions ), General lifestyle study ( homogeneous group with large samples )
and Product-specific study ( tailors questions into product categories ).
 In AIO’s, most contemporary psychographic research attempts to group
consumers according to some combination of three categories of variables:
activities ( work, hobbies, social events, vacation, entertainment, club
membership, community, shopping, sports ), interests ( family, home, job,
community, recreation, fashion, food, media, achievements ) and opinions

4. ( themselves, social issues, politics, business, economics, education, products,
future, culture.
 How do we use psychographic data? We use psychographic data by the
following ways:
1. To define the target market: To go beyond simple demographic or product
usage descriptions.
2. To create a new view of the market: Sometimes it’s not the typical “target”
which match marketer assumptions.
3. To position the product: Helps to emphasize features of the product that fit in
with a person’s lifestyle.
4. To better communicate product attributes: Input for the advertising creative
( songs, tag lines, etc. ).
5. To develop product strategy
6. To market social and political issues ( e.g. where to put prevention campaigns ).
 In Psychographic segmentation, the best-known segmentation system is The
Values and Lifestyles Systems ( VALS2 ).
 This typology arranges group vertically by their resources ( including such factors
as income, education, energy levels and eagerness to buy ) and horizontally by
self-orientation ( ideals, achievement, self-expression ).
 Geodemographics are the analytical techniques that combine data on consumer
expenditures and other socioeconomic factors with a geographic information
about the areas in which people live, in order to identify consumers who share
common consumption patterns.
 One of the popular technique is PRIZM NE ( Potential Rating Index by Zip
Market).
 Behavioral targeting is a marketing method that uses web user information to
strengthen advertising campaigns. The technique involves gathering data from a
variety of sources about the potential customer’s online browsing and shopping
behaviors. This information helps create ads that are relevant to that specific
user’s habits and interests, which the publisher can then display in that visitor’s
web browser.
 The primary purpose of this technique is to deliver advertising messages to the
behavioral target markets that have shown the most interest in them. The process
involves compiling web searches, purchase histories, frequently visited websites
and other information to create a full user profile, revealing what your audience
wants, avoids and purchases. Using these data points, companies can formulate
ads that align with the individual consumer’s trackable preferences and needs,
without conveying messages the viewer would find unappealing or irrelevant.

5. Objective 3
 The dark side of consumer behavior: Consumer behavior can be harmful to
individuals and to society. It includes consumer terrorism, addictive consumption,
compulsive consumption, consumed consumers and illegal activities.
 Consumer terrorism is the practice of introducing dangerous substances to
foodstuffs or other consumer products especially to extort money from the
manufacturers. It results in the disruption of the marketplace. E.g. susceptibility
of the nation’s food supply to bioterrorism.
 Addictive consumption is the physiological or psychological dependence on
specific products or services, most often referring to drugs, alcohol, gambling,
and tobacco. The vast majority of consumerism, however, is habitual and based
on individual choice, not addictive.
 Technology addiction is a physiological or psychological dependency to
technology. Technology addiction falls into a category of addiction termed
behavioral addictions. Behavioral addictions are widely recognized by mental
health and addiction professionals and include other behaviors such as gambling
and sex. A behavioral addiction is characterized by a progressive inability to
control, regulate, or limit the behavior. Technology addiction also shares
similarities with obsessive-compulsive disorders.
Our modern world is characterized by increasing connectivity and technology use.
However, some teens and young adults cross from normal use into a realm in
which their technology use is having a negative impact on school, work, family,
and social life. Technology addiction includes an addiction to video games, social
networking, and surfing the web, among other things.
 Compulsive consumption is a type of consumer behavior which is inappropriate,
typically excessive, and clearly disruptive to the lives of individuals who appear
impulsively driven to consume. Consumers who are compulsive buyers have an
addiction; in some respect, they are out of control and their actions may have
damaging consequences to them and to those around them. E.g. uncontrollable
shopping, gambling, drug addiction, alcoholism, various food and eating
disorders.
 Consumed consumers are those people who are used or exploited, whether
willingly or not, for commercial gain in the marketplace. E.g. prostitutes, organ,
blood, and hair donors, babies for sale.
 Illegal activities: In addition to being self-destructive or social damaging, many
consumer behavior are illegal as well. Some type of destructive consumer
behavior are consumer theft and fraud and anti-consumption.
 Consumer theft and fraud includes the term shrinkage, which is the industry
term for inventory and cash losses from shoplifting and employee theft.

6.  Anti-consumption means against consumption, yet the word is not synonymous
with alternative, conscientious, ethical, sustainable, or green consumption. While
these terms describe various forms of pro-social consumption; anti-consumption,
on the other hand, focuses on phenomena that researches traditionally have
ignored.
Consumer research predominantly focuses on the approach aspects of consumer
behaviors and attitudes; for instance, why people choose a product or brand. In
contrast, anti-consumption research focuses on why consumers avoid certain
products or brands. Although a complete understanding of our
consumption-driven society requires study of approach and avoidance
phenomenon, the latter has received less focus.
Anti-consumption need not to be contrary to business success or enhanced quality
of life, nor need it interfere with societal and business progress. Enhanced quality
of life depends on improving both the quantity and quality of consumption; thus,
anti-consumption is not an inherent economic threat. Business practitioners and
academicians should view acts of anti-consumption as opportunities to learn about
ourselves, our products, our practices, and our society.
Physicians who understand health but not illness cannot treat their patients
successfully; similarly, business scholars who only study successful companies
may never understand what causes unsuccessful companies. Therefore, study
anti-consumption completes our understanding of consumers and society.