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PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS
These are the factors which are the personal attributes of an individual. We shall study Five
of them : Attitude, Motivation, Perception, Personality and Learning.
Personality
According to Kotler,
“Personality” is a set of distinguishing human psychological traits that lead to relatively
consistent and enduring responses to environment stimuli. It is often referred to as such
traits like : self-confidence, dominance, autonomy, deference, sociability, defensiveness, and
adaptability.
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THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY :
The following are the three important and distinct properties of Personality :
BRAND PERSONALITY :
Consumers also have a certain amount of concept of “Product Personality” or “Brand
Personality”. This means that they attribute various descriptive personality like traits or
characteristics to different brands in a wide variety of product category. Such personality-like
images or brands reflect the consumers’ opinion of the inherent strength of the strong brands
of consumer products.
“Brand Personality” is defined as the specific mix of human traits that may be attributed to a
particular brand. A research study on brand personalities conducted by Jennifer Aaker has
identified the following five traits :
1. Sincerity : Down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful
2. Excitement : Daring, spirited, imaginative, and up-to-date
3. Competence : Reliable, intelligent and successful
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4. Sophistication : Upper class and charming
5. Ruggedness : Outgoing and tough.
Research evidence and common sense conclude that any brand personality which is strong
and favourable will strengthen a brand from the consumers’ point of view.
Brand Personification :
Some creative marketers have thought of an idea where they tried to recast the consumers’
perception of the attributes of a product or services into a human-like character. This is
known as “Brand Personification”. For example, the Muscle Power in dishwashing powder
and liquid. Many consumers feel about products or brands in terms of their association with
known personalities. Identifying consumers’ current brand personality links and developing
the same for new products are very important tasks for marketers.
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brand as an extension or representing an aspect of themselves. This “connection” helps
marketers to establish customer royalty and a positive relationship with them.
We have a variety of different self images / concepts represented in the following ways :
1. Consumers’ actual self-concept : this is how consumers actually see themselves,
2. Consumers’ ideal self-concept : this is how consumers would like to see themselves,
3. Social self-concept : this is how consumers think others see them,
4. Ideal social self-concept : this is how consumers would like others see them,
5. Expected self-image : this is how consumers actually expect to see themselves at some
time in future. This is somewhere between the actual and the ideal self-concepts. It’s a
future oriented combination of what they are (actual) and what they would like to be
(ideal),
6. Ought-to self-image : this consists of the traits and characteristics that consumers
believe to be their duty and obligation to possess.
The consumers are guided by different self-images in different situations for their buying
behaviour. For example :
1. For everyday household products (Private) – actual self-image,
2. For socially enhancing products (Public) – social self-image,
3. For fantasy products – ideal self-image
4. These effects are more pronounced for publicly consumed products as compared to
privately consumed goods.
Thus the concept of self-image is of utmost important and has strategic implications for
marketers. They can segment their market on the basis of relevant consumer self-images and
position their products/services as symbols of such self-images.
© Himansu S M / 16-Sep-2009