Personality

Prior to today's lecture we were asked to take the Simpson's personality type test and unfortunately mine was Krusty the clown. However, on first glance i thought this would be something negative, however,on reading the personality it related to my personality quite accurately. It described me as enjoying lively intellectual conversations, welcoming interactions such as learning opportunities. As well as describing the strengths of your personality the test also described the weaknesses which were also quite true as i am often direct and confrontational.

Personality: "a person’s unique make up, which consistently influences the way the person responds to his or her environment” (Solomon 1999)

Self Concept: "the beliefs a person holds about his or her own attributes & how he or she evaluates those qualities” (Solomon 1999)

Personality is unique to each and every person; marketers and advertisers are interested in the concept of personality in purchase choice. If personality was a key element to purchase choice key personality aspects could be targeted by marketers and advertisers to produce a suitable and effective campaign. However, it may be that self- concept is more of a key determining factor in pruchase choice. But, both personality and self- concept are hard to segment due to the complexities of a person's unique make-up.

Hollander conducted extensive research into personality and derived 4 key aspects of personality; external, internal, dynamic and consistent. External is the way that a person interacts with other people, internal is a combination of their attitudes and values, dynamic is how they behave when faced with a new situation and consistent is their characteristic style. Although this research provides us with valuable insight into personality psychologically it does not relate personality to consumer choice. This can be best demonstrated by J. Aker (1997) who derived a brand personality framework which shows how personality could be marketed by relating something like sophistication to an upper class personality or someone that is charming. By showing something to be sophisticated a marketer is able to vaguely target a personality type which would be associated with sophistication. By clicking the following link: Jaguar commercial you are able to see how advertisers have produced a sophisticated and professional advert which will in turn appeal to upper class, and supposedly charming personality types.

Despite being closely linked with personality self- concept is very different. Solomon (2001) states that "people see themselves as they imagine others see them." For example, someone suffering from an eating disorder such as bulimia or anorexia nervosa will believe that they are fat as they have the belief that others think this of them. When in reality, they are extremely slim. William James (1890) argues that self- concept derives from social comparisons with others. A person's self-concept is probably more important to a marketer as a person will make choices upon their beliefs and consequently what they believe about themselves. This will directly influence their decision making and therefore marketer should be interested in this more as this could be their deciding factor.

However, both personality and self-concept are extremely hard to target as everyone has many different elements to their personality and self-concept. A person may also be very shy about their self-concept, for example, not admitting that they have an eating disorder whilst portrayign a confident personality. It appears that personality and self-concept will baffle marketers for years to come.