Personality

Personality is a tricky thing to define. it's like the way an individual interprets and reacts to the world as they perceive it. Its their characteristics and their identity. 

The concise Oxford dictionary defines it as "character, nature, temperament, make up, persona, identity"
"Those inner psychological characteristics that both determine and reflect how a person responds to his or her environment" (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2004).

Hollander (KC. Williams, 1981) did research into personality and concluded that there are four different aspects:

The External Aspect: How a person interacts with other people

The Internal Aspect: A combination of their values and attitudes

The Dynamic Aspect: How an individual reacts to a new situation

The Consistent Aspect: a persons Characteristic style.


Marketers need to understand the consumers personalities to understand how they react to their environment, and then how they would react to messages that are aimed.

Group conformity and peer pressure

A group is 2 or more people who share a set of norms and have a structured roles in relation to each other.
The norm could be going to the same school or being a fan of the same football team. A group will spend time with each other and will experience interdependent behaviours, doing things they would not necessarily do as an individual. For example Solomon (2010) uses the idea of the "risky shift" where an individual will show a greater willingness towards riskier alternatives within a group rather that as an individual.

http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=R3KigBHmfSg&feature=related

 

The link above takes you to a video of a film some students did at school about this and I think they explain the basics of this well.

Group pressure is the implications of a norm or an expectation on an individual in a group. the individual can react in three ways :

-Conformity

-Internalisation and Identification

-Counter Conformity

There are several factors that can influence an individual to conform such as cultural pressures which the video highlighted in an extreme case how samurai will commit suicide if dishonoured.

Other examples of factors that cause social conformity are:

A fear of deviance, where the individual may believe that the group will punish them for nonconforming behaviours.

A commitment to a group can lead to social conformity, being dedicated enough to do what they are asked of, such as a terrorist killing themselves for their religion.

The sheer size and unanimity of a group can cause conformity. D. Forsyth(2009) says that in a group the more people pressuring an individual, the more likely that the individual is to conform.

The individual may be susceptible to interpersonal influences as they worry what the group thinks of them. I will go along with talking about cars with certain people even though i couldn't care less about them.

 

Values

It's a simple enough thing to understand whats values are, however explaining it i think is difficult. Its the morals, the right and wrong of a person, what they hold close to them and what they judge the importance of things; but this is quite a long way of saying it. The simplest way of describing it would be the measure that an individual puts on a tangible or intangible "thing" whether its a monetary measure, a measure of time or effort, a measure of love and friendship or a measure of how it makes themselves feel. individuals will approach life in different ways depending on what it is they value.




Wilkie [n.d] says "Values are our ideas about what is desirable" which is true. Someone who values family will desire a baby a lot more that an individual who desires a career. This comparison can be seen in everyday life where women are having children later in life than they would of done 20 or 30 years ago because they are focusing on a career. Solomon (2010) backs this up by saying that a value can be defined as a belief about some desirable end-state that specific situations can lead to. 



Kahles list of Values (1983)

1. Self Respect

2. Excitement

3. Being Well Respected

4. Self-fulfilment

5. Sense of accomplishment

6. Warm relationship with others

7. Security

8. Fun & enjoyment

9. Sense of belonging

The list above is of the values that Kahles chose as the most important in an individuals lives. in class we had to list the 3 most important values to ourselves. Mine were 6, 9 and 8. however it was interesting to see how many others had different values to mine.

To understand how a person may get to an end state or their terminal value a laddering technique.

By applying this to a product or service you can find out the reason behind a purchase of it, maybe its to lose weight to gain self esteem. By understanding the values of consumers and how they use products to meet them means marketers can advertise products in such away that provoke it to values. Such as Special K know that women want to lose weight to gain self esteem and confidence they show this in their adverts.

The VALS test (Value and Lifestyles System) is a survey that can be taken which tells how you approach life. The primary VALS type represents your dominant approach to life. The secondary classification represents a particular emphasis you give to your dominant approach. (Strategic Business Insights, 2011).

When i took the test the results were that my primary type was a "Striver" and secondary was "Achiever".

http://www.strategicbusinessinsights.com/vals/ustypes/strivers.shtml

The link above gives a description of the striver attribute and can be used to find the "Achievers" description as well.

The only element of being a "striver" I agree with is that I am motivated by achievement. However I'm not at all concerned by the opinion of others and nor do I like shopping so I was quite shocked that this was my primary VALS type. On the other hand my secondary VALS type is almost spot on, i do like a certain structure in my life and I do prefer to have a certainty about what will happen but I would not say I cared about an image of myself, I will buy value stuff if I like it.

Self-Concept

A person's self-concept is the way we perceive ourselves within a social context and how we believe others view us. However I believe that this self concept can change in different frames of social situations. For example with one group of people an individual may think that they are very smart and intelligent but with another group they may feel very stupid.

Newcomb [n.d.] defines self concept as "the individual as perceived by that individual in a socially determined frame of reference".

For marketers, using Ideal self vs. Actual self can be a very powerful tool. Solomon (2010) says the ideal self is the persons concept on how they would like to be whereas the actual self is the reality of a person. The difference between the two creates the persons self esteem, the closer the actual self is to the ideal self will mean the person will have a higher self esteem.

A marketer can use this gap between self's to sell products to consumers, by showing how using the particular product can turn them from their actual self into their ideal.

Lynx use this method within their adverts by showing that men who use Lynx deodorant will get a lot of attention from women, which many men want.

Other consumers use products as an extension of themselves and to define themselves to others.

A person has multiple selves that are surfaced dependant on location, social circle and the situation in which we find ourselves. Solomon (2010) says that a person will use different products and services depending on the situation, and that our opinion of ourselves can change too. He uses a good example of this where  your mum would not recognise "you" in how you act on holiday with friends. So from this it is important to think about which of the consumer self's that you will be firstly marketing to but then also the self that they will be in as they purchase the product.

Gender. Men vs Women

The difference between men and women's brains and the way they work is in frequent discussion and many different points of view. Its been far more important for marketers to understand each gender more thoroughly as both have changed and fragmented within the last 70 years or so, more predominately with women.

Women in the 1950's were stereotypically meant to be housewives and stay at home as a wife, child producer and full time carer; Whereas men played the stronger hunter gatherer type role. The clip below still shows the woman in the carer role however unlike the still ad it shows the woman to be a stronger person.

Even though this clip is from a sketch show, it does show how society will show that all men are vulnerable where perhaps before it wasn't so publicly stated before.

According to Solomon (2010) in many societies men are controlled by agentic goals which create self assertion and mastery. This creates the dominant role in which men typically are seen to play.

Whereas on the other hand women are guided by communal goals which encourage affiliation and the building of relationships with others which gives them a more caring outlook and attitude. 

By understanding these specific gender goals marketers can create and aim adverts which reflect these goals towards each gender. 

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a very personal thing to people, even though many can share the same memories from certain things. For example from mine many people might get nostalgic about Thomas the tank engine as they may have grown up with it as I did. But I got asked in class why a Yorkshire pudding and this is a personal one to me as it comes from how my mum could never make proper Yorkshire's but they always tasted the best, and still do.

 It is how we feel emotions from looking back into our pasts. Solomon (2010) describes it as a bittersweet emotion that is felt when reminiscing about the past.

Marketers are clever to use this as when associating a product or advert with something that makes consumers nostalgic they are bringing that nostalgic feeling to a product which can encourage consumers to buy a product. Solomon (2010) also says that memories provoked by advertisements are an effective way of creating an emotional response especially when the link between the advertisement and the nostalgia experience is strong.

I only just remember these guys but it still brought back a good feeling, and many people will remember them from the original adverts which i think is an effective tool for getting word of mouth stimulated about tetley as many of those who get nostalgic can talk about it to others who will get nostalgic about it.

This advert I put in because it is pure genius; and I believe the nostalgia is what makes it so. It is a rewrite of Queen's 'Flash' from the film Flash Gordon (bit of a favourite of mine) anyone who knows the film is instantly brought back to images from it when seeing this advert and this is why it works well. Innocent even complete the nostalgia of the advert by having Brian Blessed narrate. I think it is clever by using "fruit" in comparison to Flash as the hero to bring a good moral to the product.

The Christmas Coca Cola advert is one of the best examples of an advert that brings out nostalgia in people. the advert has been around for years now with the same song and everyone knows it.  A point of how strongly some people feel about it that a facebook group page was created which was about how its not truely christmas for them until this advert has been shown.