Lecture Five: Personality or Self Concept

First off I will be completely honest with you. I wasn't able to attend this weeks lecture, but and it's a good but, i read all of the lecture notes and got some notes off my friend so hopefully this weeks post should make some sense :)

This weeks lecture was all about peoples personalities and self-concepts and how marketers and advertising agencies prey on this to get you and me to buy into a particular product or brand.

The definition of personality according to the Oxford online dictionary is:

The characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s character.

Now from a marketing/advertising perspective this doesn't really sound relevant to use as a basis for an ad campaign or marketing scheme. If you compare this to the definition of Self-Concept:

The mental image or perception that one has of oneself.

You should be able to see that from a marketing point of view self-concept is easier to manipulate than personality. Someone's self-concept can be changed simply by making them think or feel as if they NEED a particular product to be the person they see themselves to be and in most cases want to be. This point is made more apparent when Solomon et al (2001) suggests that People see themselves as they imagine other people see them. So this means that you have 2 very different views but essentially they are both valuable to a marketer. I would however just like to take a minute to break the whole 'self-concept' concept down as it comes in 3 parts:

• Self Image - This is the kind of person we think we are.


• Ideal Self - This is the kind of person we would like to be.


• Self Esteem - This is whether you actually like yourself and is determined by looking and seeing if your Self Image matches that of your Ideal Self.

It is very common though for the consumer's Self Image to be very far away from there ideal self and with the fact that "72% of men and 85% of women are unhappy with at least one aspect of their appearance" (Goleman, D. (1991).).

Its because of this high percentage of unhappy people that marketers prey on. At the end of the day if a woman is unhappy with the way she looks you can sell her make-up which you tell her will make her look 18 again, when we all really know it wont but consumers buy into it anyway... anything that you can sell to a consumer on the basis that it will help them towards their ideal self will fly off the shelves. Yes you can argue it is immoral but at the end of the day business is ruthless and it is just business. Now I will cover this in more detail in later posts but this ties in very nicely with Mazlow's Hierarchy of Need because the top 2 parts of the triangle are esteem and self-actualisation; so after all the other need for humans is fulfilled then we actually begin to look inwards at our selves and begin to asses whether we are actually what we aim and want to be.

Please have a look - http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=2&did=1464131531&SrchMode=1&sid=3&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1238594670&clientId=25802

Certain advertisements can be used by Marketers and Advertisers to trigger what is know as 'Social-Comparison' by which the consumer, triggered by the ad, begins to compare themselves to that of the people in the advert. This as you can see gives Marketers and Advertisers a controlling factor over any of their consumers who can potentially be trigger by the advert. [Journal]
Moving on from just the concept of Social-Comparison we also have the consumption factor... 'You are what you consume' Solomon et al (2006). This is the next step up from when I was mentioning Self-Concept earlier and suggests that "A consumers exhibits attachment to an object to the extent that it is used by that person to maintain his or her self-concept." (Douglas, B. H. & Thompson, J. C. (2004).). This is because people will make there first judgements on what a person wares, the car they drive, whether they eat a salad or a steak at dinner; all these things add up and make a pre-perception of a person before they have even spoke.

In summary the whole self-concept theory is the stronger weapon for marketers and advertisers as they can manipulate the self-concept of a consumer through social-comparison theory and coerce them into buying products that they don't really need and are probably above their budget.

Finally here is an ad that I think fit in here. :)





_______________________________________________________________________________________

PERSONALITY

I would like to start talking about a persons personality by starting with a definition by Schiffman and Kanuk (2004) which states a persons personality is:

Those inner psychological characteristics that both determine and reflect how a person responds to his or her environment.

This is a good quote however I personally think that a person's personality stretches further than that; it's not just the inner makings but it must involve how people react and interact with other people and how we deal with different situations. This is covered in more detail by Hollander's research which gives 4 different sections to a person's personality. These are:

• The External Aspect: how a person interacts with other people.


• The Internal Aspect: a combination of their values & attitudes.


• The Dynamic Aspect: faced with a new situation how do they behave e.g. social adjustments.


• The Consistent Aspect: their characteristic style.

We then can use these four sections as a basis for personality traits, whether someone is outgoing or not etc. From this Cattell’s Trait Theory of Personality was born with 16 traits which you are either one or the other of. They are:

Reserved--------------------------------Outgoing
Less Intelligent------------------------More Intelligent
Affected by feelings--------------------Emotionally Stable
Humble----------------------------------Assertive
Serious---------------------------------Happy-go-lucky
Expedient-------------------------------Conscientious
Restrained------------------------------Venturesome
Tough-minded----------------------------Tender-minded
Trusting--------------------------------Suspicious
Practical-------------------------------Imaginative
Forthright------------------------------Shrewd
Self-assured----------------------------Apprehensive
Conservative----------------------------Experimenting
Group-dependent-------------------------Self-sufficient
Uncontrolled----------------------------Controlled
Relaxed---------------------------------Tense

Form this starting point other people have conducted questionnaires using the traits and have come up with 4 pairs of 2 letter of which you can only be one or the other. These then make many different 4 letter codes which can tell your, in detail, what your personality type is. Each pair belongs to a specific section and they are as follows:

Pair One: Direction of your energy force

• E (Extroversion) - Deals with things, people and situations.


• I (Introversion) - Deals with studying ideas, information, explanations and beliefs.

Pair Two: Information Processing

• S (Sensing) - You prefer to deal with facts, what you know.


• N (Intuition) - You prefer ideas, looking into the unknown, looking at possibilities.

Pair Three: Making Decisions

• T (Thinking) - You decide on the basis of logic, using an analytic and detached approach.


• F (Feeling) - You decide using values and/or personal beliefs, letting.

Pair Four: Organizing your life

• J (Judging) - You prefer your life to be planned in a stable and organised way.


• P (Perceiving) - You prefer to go with the flow, to maintain flexibility and respond to events.

As a fun added activity for the lecture Ruth asked us to complete this questionnaire which uses these four pairs. The questionnaire is a more comprehensive version on the Myer Briggs test and was created by Carl Jung.

My results came out to be ENFP so straight away this means that my strongest tendencies are Extrovert, Intuition, Feeling and Perceiving however I was not convinced that 1 try would be sufficient so I waited a week and took the test again and this time I came out as a ESFP which is not surprising as I will have probably answered the questions depending on how I felt that day.

I then decided that I wanted to take another personality test that Ruth had mentioned, this one can be found here and my result was ENTJ which again is different which still just reinforces my idea that although the questionnaires are a good start they are not 100% accurate as the answers are controlled by the feeling of that person at that particular time of the test.

Although they were different each time I did see that they generally all had something in common (The fact that they all started with E) so they can give some good information. Studying consumer's personalities however helps marketers to aim brands at different people's personalities. This is where Brand Personality Framework (Aaker, J. (1997).) comes in. Brand Personality is defined as:

The attribution of human personality traits (seriousness, warmth, imagination, etc.) to a brand as a way to achieve differentiation. Usually done through long-term above-the-line advertising and appropriate packaging and graphics.
(MarketingWeb.com)

Below is a list of common attributes that advertisers use in ads to target specific people:


Now the selection of these attributes is what advertisers need to decide when coming up with an advertisement. Here are some examples I have found.

• Sincerity & Excitement.

• Excitement, Sophistication & Ruggedness.

• Ruggedness, Competence & Sophistication.

Lecture Four: Positioning

Once the company has their target audience it is then up to them to differentiate their product from the competing ones and position themselves correct that customers will buy their product over others. Kotler et al (2008) defines a products position as "the way the product is defined by consumers minds relative to competing products." so you can understand that the position that a companies product holds with the market and the consumers mind can either make the product a huge success or just a product wasting space on the shelf.

Now the way the position is decided by the consumer is down to the important attributes that the products hold and the values that come with that. From that the consumer then categorises it and positions them in their minds by comparing the perceptions, impressions and feelings that they have of the product. This is all to simplify the buying process for the consumer because it's not possible to constantly re-evaluate products every time.

This might sound like the position of a product must be left up to chance; this is not the case though as companies will have strategies on how to position and differentiate themselves. For example a luxury car maker will keep with the fact that they are luxury if they know that the market is looking for it. This however can take a very long time to then just fail at the end. In summery positioning is most probably the most complex and difficult section of the STP theory but if you get it right will reap you rewards.

Lecture Four: Targeting

Once you have split your market into segments of potential consumers you will then move onto what is know as Targeting which is the second stage in the practice of STP. Defined as "The process of evaluating each market segment's attractiveness and selecting one or more segment to enter." Kotler et al. (2008) just shows the importance of this stage; as it is the actual selection of a group on consumers that should be affected the most by what the company has to offer.

Now as suggested in Kotler's definition it is the evaluation and selection of segments. This means that their must be 2 stages, the first is obviously the evaluation of each segment and this is achieved by comparing the segment to a set of criteria, which are:

Segment Size & Growth





- This will include looking at current segment sales, growth rates and expected profitability, with also the right size and growth to match the company. It is also invaluable to understand that the biggest and fastest growing segments are not always the best as the segment is too big and fast moving for the company to viably keep up.




Segment Structural Attractiveness





- This is where you need to consider the players within the segment, a company may not want to enter a segment that is over crowded or highly competitive as it could limit the profitability of the segment. The consumers influence in the segment also has to be considered because segments with high buyer power could mean that all prices are driven down creating more aggressive competition.




Company Objectives & Resources





- Touched on in the first point, even if the top 2 criteria are met the company may simply have to let that segment go because they are not big enough themselves for it to work. The company also has to think about its own long term goals and if they don't join the the segment wont be selected.

Once the segments have been evaluated the company is in a much more informed position to make its selection of the segments; now the company may only choose one segment but at the same time it's not uncommon for a company to choose multiple segments. Really though, a company should only pick segments that will offer them real value and at the same time get on over on the competitors. After the segment(s) have been selected to be targeted by the company they become what is know as a Target Market. Kotler et al. (2008) defines a Target Market as "A set of buyers sharing common needs or characteristics that the company decides to serve." which you couldn't really put any better. The target markets will contain smaller numbers than the overall market and will respond better to what the company puts out there.

Lecture Four: Segmentation

Segmentation is a clever marketing tool which allows marketers to split the whole market into little groups or segments of potential customers with the same or similar interests and needs. The CIM(Chartered Institute of Marketing) defines Marketing Segmentation as:

The division of the market place into distinct subgroups or segments, each characterised by particular tastes and requiring a specific marketing mix.

One key thing to understand is that there are many ways to segment a market because as companies, you can not appeal to every consumer in the same way. There are too many of them, spread too far apart and all with different wants, needs and buying traits. Another major factor which has influenced the use of segmentation by businesses is the change in our economy... it has moved from what was know as a manufacturing economy by where companies employed 'mass marketing' strategies which worked really well. Now however the economy has moved more into a 'service economy' by where all the after sales and after care plays the larger role.

This is mainly because we, as consumers have become more savvy and as a result, more segmented. Companies have to now employ 'target marketing' where there consumer basis is researched and analysed to create focused and targeted advertisements which appeal to the targeted market. Now to find these groups or segments there are various ways to separate the market, these include:

Geographic - Segmenting the market into different geographical groups such as neighbourhoods, cities, counties, countries or nations etc. This is down to the company to decide if they want to focus in one particular area or focus on a selection of areas.

A good example of Geographic Segmentation is the various Tesco stores:

• Tesco Express - Ussually located in and around large neighbourhoods and will have basics like bread, milk, fruit&veg, cheese and toilet roll plus many other basic essentials.


• Tesco Metro - These stores are usually located in busy cities where there is no more room to build a a regular store and in small towns on their high streets. It will be like a mini store with most things that you would find in a regular store, even a Customer Service Desk in some cases.

Then from these you will have your regular superstore and the extra stores. You can see though how Tesco carefully select where to put each type of store by Geographic Segmentation.

Demographic - Segmenting the market on a person's or group of people's personal circumstances such as age, gender, income, family size, race, nationality, religion, family life cycle and education.

Psycographic - Segmenting the market by social-class, lifestyle or personality characteristics. The main reason for Psycographic Segmentation is because:

People in the same Demographic Segment will have different Psycographic make-ups.
(Kotler et al. 2008)

Behavioural - Segmenting the market based on their knowledge, attitudes, uses or responses to a product. From this point though it can be broken down to what is known as 'Occasion Segmentation' by when people are grouped according to when they get the idea to buy, buy a product or when they actually use said product. This is whole provides a good foundation for creating market segments.

Now just take a few minutes to watch this short clip on Segmentation by Market Analysis.



These however are only a few ways to segment a market; the example picture below shows a bunch of random shapes that can all be segmented in some way whether by the actual shape, colour, what side if the page they're on etc. This basically represents the world of consumers and demonstrates how many different ways you can segment them. Have a go anyway and see how many you can come up with.

Lecture Three: Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt Psychology is a way of thinking and comes from the German word for "form". It suggests that the perception of the "unified whole" or "configuration" is different from it's actual parts. What this means is that we see a different picture as a whole than we do from its parts. To further sum this up there are 6 laws:

Law of Similarity

The Law of Similarity states that "Items that are similar to one another will be grouped together.". and this is to make it easier for the brain to process the information. The example above shows a rectangle but most people will first see two sets of rows (one triangles and one circles).


Law of Prägnanz

The Law of Prägnanz states that "Reality is organised or reduced to the simplest form possible.". This is again another way that the brain can simplify a problem to make sense of it and means that like the example above, instead of seeing multiple and more complicated shapes we actually see a very simple set of 5 rings.


Law of Proximity

The Law of Proximity states that "Objects near each other tend to be grouped together.". As the example above shows this law shows that even though all the shapes are the same your brain will make it even simpler and group the shapes into even bigger shapes that are close to each other. This means that instead of multiple circle you have 2 shapes made up of circles which is easier to process.


Law of Continuity



The Law of Continuity states that "Lines are seen as following the smoothest path.". This law is the understanding that instead of breaking up lines into different segments your brain will make the lines flow the simplest way possible.


Law of Closure

The Law of Closure states that "Objects that are grouped together are seen as a whole.". It means as you can see from the example above that your brain will fill in the gaps that are in the image to create familiar shapes.

Law of Figure/Ground

The Law of Figure/Ground states that "Some images will be split up into figure (fore-ground) and ground (back-ground).". This basically means that some images are seen to have a fore-ground and a back-ground even though the image is 2D. If you look at the example above you will see two separate images even thought there is only one image there. It may not even be possible to see the image as a whole and not 2 separate images.

Lecture Three: Perception Tests

In this weeks lesson we, as the students, were going to be running the show. At the end of last week Ruth told us that in groups of our own choice we had to go away and prepare a test for the lesson today.

The idea was that if we carried out our experiments we would:

- Inform the rest of the class about our experiment.
- Discuss and evaluate our experiment and findings.
- Understand how our perceptions are different.
- Get a better understanding of what experiment we should carry out for our assignment.
________________________________________________________________________________

Experiment One: The Coke Taste Test

Experiment Holders: Tim and Kara

Method
The test was a pure and simple taste test which involved three different drinks from the Coca-Cola brand. These were regular Coke, Coke Zero and Diet Coke. The idea is that there was a set of 3 cups on the table, each containing one of each of these drinks; volunteers then taste each one and rate it from 1 to 3 (3 being bad and 1 good) on its taste. Then if they wanted they could guess which one was Coke, Coke Zero and Diet Coke.

What Tim and Kara were hoping to find is that a persons perception of a Brand will affect the taste of the drink. You may have heard of the Coke vs. Pepsi blind taste test were asked to try a sample of Coke and a sample of Pepsi, not knowing which one is which. They found that people preferred the taste of Pepsi but would buy coke because of the perception of the brand.

Results
What they found is Nadia, without knowing which drink is which, rated regular Coke as the best, Coke-Zero as 2 and Diet Coke as the worst. These findings didn't come a shock to me and Jeffrey because we also did not know what drink was which but purely from Nadia's reaction we could tell what drink was which, this made it very interesting because Nadia went against what most people said, which was that Diet Coke tastes the best.

Evaluation
From the discussion in the class of the experiment we found that the results may have been better if there had been something to bland the pallet between each taste. This way any of the previous tastes would not affect the results. Also we found that it may have been better if it had been carried out more formally with a range of people etc.


Experiment Two: Chocolate Taste Test

Experiment Holders: Nicola, Amy, Anne-Marie, Kirsty and Alex

Method
The method is a selection of different chocolate bars, all the same type of chocolate (I.E. Milk) but different brands etc. They had 5 in total:

- Waitrose Belgium Chocolate
- Tesco's Value Milk Chocolate
- Asda's Mid-Range Milk Chocolate
- Tesco's Mid-Range Milk Chocolate
- Tesco's High-End Milk Chocolate

Again they wanted to see how the brand of a particular chocolate affects the taste and were expecting, as most of us would, that the most preferred would be the Waitrose Belgium Chocolate. The idea is that volunteers come up try each chocolate and then choose their favourite.

Results
What they found was that overall the class preferred the Tesco Value Milk Chocolate which came as a surprise to all of us. They also found that the Tesco High-End Milk Chocolate, which was expected to be the 2nd best, was actually the worst overall because it was not as smooth as it could be.

Evaluation
In the class we again mentioned that it may have been a good idea to have something to clean the pallet so that the taste buds were not affected by the previous taste. It was also suggested that it might be a good idea to have no more that 3 different types of chocolate so that it is easier for most people. Finally as with experiment one we suggested that it would be good with a range of ages etc because of different taste sensations.

Lecture Two: Perception

This week we had a discussion about perception of the customer. To start I have two definitions:

My Definition

Perception is how someone understands their surroundings and information that is showered on them and then how they make decisions based on this information.

Definition Two

"Perception is the process of sensing, selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world."
(Wilkie, R. 1994)

The definition above by Richard Wilkie, who is a lecturer on perception at Leeds University, really sums up the way our brains 'sense' all this information that is around us and how it automatically selects the information that is the most relevant, Then from that how our brain interprets this information. This can then be explained even further by highlighting the 5 stages of the Buyer Decision Process Model, which are:

Need Recognition - This is where the consumer recognises the need to buy a particular product or service.

Information Search - This is where the consumer may do some research, or shop around as it may be more commonly known.

Evaluation of alternatives - This could be where the consumer may decide to choose say the companies own label as an alternative to the named brand of a particular product.

Purchase Decision - This is 'crunch time' where the consumer finally makes that decision based on the information that has been gather and processed. Buy or don't buy.

Post-Purchase Behaviour - This is where the consumer will feel the effects of there purchase. Are they happy with what they have bought, maybe not. Was it worth it etc.

From this we then talked about the two types of purchasing. The first is the obvious and is where a customer researches all the alternatives and tries to gather as much information as possible before they buy a product. This is for things like cars, computers, houses etc. The other type is impulsive and is essentially buy now, think later. The 5 stages of the Buying Decision Process here are completely rushed through and blurred. This can leave the customer feeling very happy because these sorts of decisions are made purely to satisfy the wants that the customer has. It's only until after that they may realise that the product cost too much or they didn't actually want it in the first place. This kind of decision making is common when buying clothes, shoes etc.

The next thing I want to talk about is the factors that influence the buyer's behaviour and they are (Source: Kotler):

Psychological - This is things like the beliefs and attitude of the buyer and includes all the the perception and motivational aspects that affect a buyer's decision making.

Personal - This is factors like the age and the lifestyles of the buyer, what kind of job they may have and what the economy might be like (For instance with the state of our economy at present people are 'tightening their belts' and not spending as freely as they may have a couple of years ago.).

Social - This includes factors that include social groups, family, friends etc. Also groups that the customer may be in and how what they say or do influence the decisions of the customer.

Cultural - This is very much like social but is more individual and will include factors like religion, education, peers etc.

Lecture One: Introduction

Today's lecture was all about introducing us to the 'Understanding the Customer' Module with Ruth. We talked about what we are going to cover this year and our assignments etc including setting up this blog.

We first talked about the fact that in the west we as people are defined by our possessions and not by our personality or the people around us. We are very materialistic and this is what Marketers and Advertisers play on by convincing us that not only do we want their products, we NEED THEM! Then we will not be happy until we have this product because we think that if we have this product we will have the life of the person in the advert or on the picture.

To show a person's stereotypical view of a person by their possessions we were asked to bring in a possession that belonged to us but not to tell anyone what we had brought. The possessions were then handed out to groups of four and we had to determine what type of person owns this and to decide on who it might be in the class. This proved an interesting experiment because we all defined a persons social status, class and personality and sometimes we were completely off. This however is in our nature because we do decide peoples class, interests and personality on what they own. This is not out fault though, this is how we have been conditioned to perceive people by the media and advertising agencies.

Russell W. Belk a professor of marketing says that:

" Possessions are an important component of sense of self. The most direct form of evidence is found in the nature of self-perceptions. Additional, especially striking evidence is found in the diminished sense of self when possessions are unintentionally lost or stolen. More evidence in the role of possessions in sense of self comes from anthropological studies of the way possessions are treated ritually and after death.”

What he says is very true. You may not think it is but here's an example. Say you just lost your mobile phone, the fact is a mobile phone is just a piece of technology to allow you to communicate to people on the move, take photos and play music. But then you start to think about all of the friends numbers you can't remember, all of those holiday photos and your friends birthday photos that you haven't put on the computer yet and all those text messages that you kept because they were close to your heart. Suddenly you get that feeling in your stomach that feels like you have lost a piece of yourself. This is what Belk is talking about.

It ties in with the concept of 'WE ARE WHAT WE HAVE' with was what we moved onto. We have moved on from the concept that we are what we are seen to be which is know as the 'ME' concept to the 'MINE' concept which says we are defined by what we have. It is a mix of these that determines what type of person we are.

Now below is a video of the new Nokia Phone Commercial which i think shows a relevance to my phone example above.



It is a fact that people buy possessions to make a statement about themselves, to impress others, to make them jealous or just to show off the wealth. So I ask you:

Who are you?

What do people think about you?

What do your possessions say something about you?


Finally I have a clip from the film Fight Club (1999) where Edward Norton has a short rant based on consumerism. Enjoy

Welcome to my Blog

Hello! My name is Adam Blaynee and i am studying a BA(hons) degree titled 'Advertising Management & Digital Communications' at Bucks New Uni.

Welcome to my blog. Each week I will update my blog with information about the lecture and then add some of my own thoughts and information i have found. This will include sources like videos, pictures and academic papers/journals I may have found and though to be relevant.

This is part of my coursework for my module titled 'Understanding the Customer' so it will be very psychologically based with some brief marketing references and will serve as my own database of foundation knowledge to help me in year 2 and 3.

Feel free to comment on my blog and send me links to sources that you think I may find useful but note that i will view comments before they are posted so please keep it relevant and just enjoy my blog.


Kind Regards


Adam Blaynee
___________________________________________________________________