Monday, 21 February 2011

Personality & Self Concept

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between personality and self concept. Put simply, personality is the way a person presents themselves outwardly whereas self concept relates to how a person feels about themselves.

Personality is made up of the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that make a person unique. (About.com, 2011)

Self Concept is your understanding about who you believe and feel you are and what you're about. We all have a perception of how we see and feel ourselves to be. (Marvin Barrett, 2009)

Often, one person's personality and self concept can be drastically different. Below is an image of 'Brooke' from a television show. On the show, her character comes across as very confident, fashionable,  fun and beautiful. That is her personality and how she wants others to see her. The way she sees herself, however, is very different. She thinks she isn't pretty, good, smart or talented enough.


So what do personality and self concept have to do with marketing?


According to Kotler, the above table shows what influences buyer behaviour. Under PERSONAL comes personality and self concept, that is what will be explored in this blog.

Sometimes when selling a product or a service, the marketer is not trying to sell to a person, but the person they aspire to be.

 Selling to somebody who wants to be slimmer.
 Selling to someone who wants to appear wealthy or show their wealth.
 Selling to someone who wants to be blonde.
 Selling to someone who wants to look trendy.

Using Apple Mac as an example, they are not only targetting people who want to buy an MP3 player, they are targetting people who will want to most current, 'cool' MP3 player. Say a customer goes into a store and views two MP3 players. Both the same size, colour, memory and have the same functions but one is an iPod. There is a difference between the customer who buys the MP3 player for its functionality and cost and the customer who pays more because there is a picture of an apple on the back of their MP3 player. This comes down to self concept, who a person feels they should be.

Because of the relation between personality, self concept and marketing, theorists have come up with a number of concepts to describe personality and self image.

  • Hollander
This image depicts Hollander's Concentric Ring Theory. Hollander believed that personality could be represented by three rings; the innermost ring being the hardest to penetrate. 

PSYCHOLOGICAL CORE – the real you, the core concept of self that individuals are unwilling to reveal.
TYPICAL RESPONSES – represents how individuals are likely to respond in a situation.
ROLE-RELATED BEHAVIOUR – how an individual responds in a specific situation. This may be an uncharacteristic behaviour.

Hollander also created a theory which builds on the concentric rings.

The External Aspect: how a person interacts with other people
The Internal Aspect: a combination of their values and attitudes
The Dynamic Aspect: faced with a new situation how do they behave
THESE THREE ASPECTS TEND TO FORM THE LAST ONE.
The Consistent Aspect: their characteristic style

The Dynamic Aspect is linked closely with 'role related behaviour' from the previous theory.

It is clear from Hollander's theories that personality is made up of a person'sbeliefs and values and how that makes them interact with other people.
  • Cattel's Trait Theory of Personality

When asked to describe the personality of a friend, we would normally respond by giving a list of their friend's traits. This is how we generally understand personality and therefore  is the logic behind Cattel's Trait Theory.
In addition, a psychologist named Gordon Allport came up with a trait theory in 1936. There are of course thousands of words in the English dictionary that can describe character traits. To better analyse personality, he separated traits into three levels: 
  • "Cardinal Traits: Traits that dominate an individual’s whole life, often to the point that the person becomes known specifically for these traits. People with such personalities often become so known for these traits that their names are often synonymous with these qualities. Consider the origin and meaning of the following descriptive terms: Freudian, Machiavellian, narcissism, Don Juan, Christ-like, etc. Allport suggested that cardinal traits are rare and tend to develop later in life.
  • Central Traits: These are the general characteristics that form the basic foundations of personality. These central traits, while not as dominating as cardinal traits, are the major characteristics you might use to describe another person. Terms such as intelligent, honest, shy and anxious are considered central traits.
  • Secondary Traits: These are the traits that are sometimes related to attitudes or preferences and often appear only in certain situations or under specific circumstances. Some examples would be getting anxious when speaking to a group or impatient while waiting in line." (Cherry, 2011)
These three levels reflect Hollander's Three Concentric Rings. It is clear that a pattern is forming within each theory about personality which relates to different levels of relation to the core personality of a person which are shown in different situations.

  • Horney
Horney's theory, developed in 1945, suggests that you develop your personality as a child. As a child, you are dependent on your care givers and you will become either compliant, aggressive or detached based on the level of anxiety experienced at this stage in life.

Compliant= Going towards others. (affection/affiliation) - well loved and nurtured as a child
Aggressive= Going against others. (power/domination) - experienced abuse or intimidation as a child
Detached= Turning away from others. (isolation/indifference) - ignored as a child
  • The Big Five Scale of Personality Type 
Researchers gathered information on people with certain traits to determine five main personality categories that most people could fall into.


  •  Hidden Motives
According to Freudian theory, the mind is conflicted between pleasure seeking and social responsibility. (Solomon et al, 2010) For example, wanting to play loud music at a party while also being concerned about upsetting the neighbours. This conflicts is carried out in the mind using the following three systems:

  1. ID: This is the part of the mind that wants to maximise on pleasure and avoid pain. "It is selfish and illogical." (Solomon et al, 2010, p187)
  2. SUPEREGO: This part is the opposite if the id because it is hyper aware of society's rules. It tries to prevent the id from being successful in self pleasure seeking.
  3. EGO: This is the mediator between the id and the superego. It satisfies the id without breaking the superego's rules. 
The devil = id
The angel = superego
The person = ego

Myers- Brigg Type Indicator

Based on the theory of Carl Jung, the Myers- Brigg Type Indicator was developed to measure a person's dominant preferences for taking in information and making decisions. 

These are my results:



I agree with this analysis, but I never thought I would be in the same category as Bart Simpson!


Sometimes a personality is created for a brand. This helps the brand to relate to its target market and the consumer can identify with the brand values.




For example, if Simple skincare had a personality, it would come under the sincerity label. This advert sums up why this conclusion was reached, note the wholesome, natural and honest approach to selling. "Simple says- We believe in goodness."


Personality and self image is a vital part of understanding consumer behaviour. "Consumers demonstrate consistency between their values and the things they buy. Self-image congruence models predict that products will be chosen when their attributes match some aspect of the self." (Solomon et al, 2010, p151)




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