Lesson 2 – INTERNAL INFLUENCES ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Unit 4 – The Self: Mind, Gender, and Body
Overview
We choose many products, from cars to cologne, because we want to highlight or hide some aspect of the self. In this unit, we’ll focus on how consumers’ feelings about themselves shape their consumption practices, particularly as they strive to fulfill their society’s expectations about how a male or female should look and act.
Learning Objectives
• The self-concept strongly influences consumer behavior.
• Products often define a person’s self-concept.
• Gender identity is an important component of a consumer’s self-concept.
• The way we think about our bodies (and the way our culture tells us we should think) is a key component of self-esteem.
• Every culture dictates certain types of body decoration or mutilation.
Course materials
The self-concept strongly influences consumer behavior.
Consumers’ self-concepts are reflections of their attitudes toward themselves. Whether these attitudes are positive or negative, they will help to guide many purchase decisions; we can use products to bolster self-esteem or to “reward” the self.
Products often define a person’s self-concept.
We choose many products because we think that they are similar to our personalities. The symbolic interactionist perspective of the self implies that each of us actually has many selves, and we require a different set of products as props to play each role. We view many things other than the body as part of who we are. People use valued objects, cars, homes, and even attachments to sports teams or national monuments to define the self, when they incorporate these into the extended self.
Gender identity is an important component of a consumer’s self-concept.
Sex roles, or a society’s conceptions about masculinity and femininity, exert a powerful influence on our expectations about the brands we should consume. Advertising plays an important role because it portrays idealized expectations about gender identity.
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The way we think about our bodies (and the way our culture tells us we should think) is a key component of self-esteem.
A person’s conception of his or her body also provides feedback to self-image. A culture communicates specific ideals of beauty, and consumers go to great lengths to attain these. Many consumer activities involve manipulating the body, whether through dieting, cosmetic surgery, piercing, or tattooing. Sometimes these activities are carried to an extreme because people try too hard to live up to cultural ideals. One common manifestation is eating disorders, diseases in which women in particular become obsessed with thinness.
Every culture dictates certain types of body decoration or mutilation.
Body decoration or mutilation may serve such functions as separating group members from nonmembers, marking the individual’s status or rank within a social organization or within a gender category (e.g., homosexual), or even providing a sense of security or good luck.
Read:
Chapter 6 – The Self: Mind, Gender, and Body
Consumer Behavior 12e
by: Michael R. Solomon
Activities/assessment:
Answer the following Review Questions:
1. What is the Big Five?
2. Compare and contrast the real versus the ideal self. List three products for which a person is likely to use each type of self as a reference point when he or she considers a purchase.
3. How might the “digital self” differ from a consumer’s self-concept in the real world, and why is this difference potentially important to marketers?
4. Have ideals of beauty in the Philippines changed during the past 50 years? If so, how?
5. What is vanity sizing?
6. What does “the looking-glass self” mean? How do feelings about the self-influence what we buy?
7. How do Eastern and Western cultures differ in terms of how people think about the self?
8. How are subjective views of body image exploited by marketers?
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Lesson 2 – INTERNAL INFLUENCES ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Unit 5 – Personality, Lifestyles, and Values
Overview
The concept of personality refers to a person’s unique psychological makeup and how it consistently influences the way a person responds to his or her environment. Do all people have personalities? Certainly, we can wonder about some we meet! Actually, even though the answer seems like a no-brainer, some psychologists argue that the concept of personality may not be valid. Many studies find that people do not seem to exhibit stable personalities. Because people don’t necessarily behave the same way in all situations, they argue that this is merely a convenient way to categorize people.
Learning Objectives
• A consumer’s personality influences the way he or she responds to marketing stimuli, but efforts to use this information in marketing contexts meet with mixed results.
• Brands have personalities.
• A lifestyle defines a pattern of consumption that reflects a person’s choices of how to spend his or her time and money, and these choices are essential to define consumer identity.
• It can be more useful to identify patterns of consumption than knowing about individual purchases when organizations craft a lifestyle marketing strategy.
• Psychographics go beyond simple demographics to help marketers understand and reach different consumer segments.
• Underlying values often drive consumer motivations.
Course materials
A consumer’s personality influences the way he or she responds to marketing stimuli, but efforts to use this information in marketing contexts meet with mixed results.
The concept of personality refers to a person’s unique psychological makeup and how it consistently influences the way a person responds to his or her environment. Marketing strategies based on personality differences have met with mixed success, partly because of the way researchers have measured and applied these differences in personality traits to consumption contexts. Some analysts try to understand underlying differences in small samples of consumers by employing techniques based on Freudian psychology and variations of this perspective, whereas others have tried to assess these dimensions more objectively in large samples using sophisticated, quantitative techniques
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Brands have personalities.
A brand personality is the set of traits people attribute to a product as if it were a person. Consumers assign personality qualities to all sorts of inanimate products. Like our relationships with other people, these designations can change over time; therefore, marketers need to be vigilant about maintaining the brand personality they want consumers to perceive. Forging a desirable brand personality often is key to building brand loyalty.
A lifestyle defines a pattern of consumption that reflects a person’s choices of how to spend his or her time and money, and these choices are essential to define consumer identity.
A consumer’s lifestyle refers to the ways he or she chooses to spend time and money and how his or her consumption choices reflect these values and tastes. Lifestyle research is useful for tracking societal consumption preferences and also for positioning specific products and services to different segments. Marketers segment based on lifestyle differences; they often group consumers in terms of their AIOs (activities, interests, and opinions).
It can be more useful to identify patterns of consumption than knowing about individual purchases when organizations craft a lifestyle marketing strategy.
We associate interrelated sets of products and activities with social roles to form consumption constellations. People often purchase a product or service because they associate it with a constellation that, in turn, they link to a lifestyle they find desirable. Geodemography involves a set of techniques that use geographical and demographic data to identify clusters of consumers with similar psychographic characteristics.
Psychographics go beyond simple demographics to help marketers understand and reach different consumer segments.
Psychographic techniques classify consumers in terms of psychological, subjective variables in addition to observable characteristics (demographics). Marketers have developed systems to identify consumer “types” and to differentiate them in terms of their brand or product preferences, media usage, leisure time activities, and attitudes toward broad issues such as politics and religion.
Underlying values often drive consumer motivations.
Products take on meaning because a person thinks the products will help him or her to achieve some goal that is linked to a value, such as individuality or freedom. A set of core values characterizes each culture, to which most of its members adhere.
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Read:
Chapter 7 – Personality, Lifestyles, and Values
Consumer Behavior 12e
by: Michael R. Solomon
Activities/assessment:
Answer the following Review Questions:
1. How does Freud’s work on the unconscious mind relate to marketing practice?
2. Enculturation helps us learn the beliefs and behaviors of our own society. Could an external marketer learn the same things through acculturation?
3. What is the basic philosophy behind a lifestyle marketing strategy?
4. How can marketers stay on top of changes in lifestyle trends?