Individual determinants of CB-

Personality
 Understanding the nature of individual
differences is a important building block in
the psychological foundation of human
behaviour

 Personality produces life styles which in turn
are closely related to social and cultural
influences, standard of living and thereby
buying behaviour.

 Personality
 Personality is a totality of a persons makeup
rather than focussing on specific actions in a
particular situation

 Segmenting markets on the basis of
personality traits is on the belief that
consumers make purchase decisions that
reflect their personalities

 Advertising and marketing people have every
time targeted specific personalities

 Meaning of personality
 Unique combination of factors in persons like
selfconfidence,dominance,autonomy,defenc
e,sociability,defensiveness and adaptability


 Its defined as those inner psychological

characteristics that both determine and
reflect how a person responds to his or her
environment

 Nature of personality
 It is the essence of individual differences

 It’s a unique combination of different individual
characteristics

 Many individuals tend to be similar in one or
two characteristics but they cannot be alike

 Personality thus helps a marketer to categorize
people in to different groups on the basis of
single or few traits and also enable them to
segment the market
 Personality is consistent and
enduring
 Personality is permanent and long term
character

 Marketers can learn which personality traits
can influence consumer responses

 In spite of stable nature of personality CB may
vary because of social,cultural,psychological
and eviromental factors that affect
behaviour
 Personality can change
 Unforeseen happenings like a major accident
death of a dear one

 A major career promotion or demotion


 Change in the status and structure of family


 Personality also change gradually in a
maturing process.
 Measuring personality
Rating methods-


 Using standardised rating scales and one or

more evaluators assessing the personality
charecteristics
 Informal interview with the individuals
concerned and rating them
 Observation of the individuals behavior in a
designed setting or in own environment
 The success of this studies on the personality
charecters chosen and skills of the evaluators


 Situational tests
 A situation is given to a particular group and
persons are allowed to interact with each
other,behaviour of each persons in the group
are observed and measured

 The next is stress test where an individual is
put in to a pressure situation.His reacting to
the situation is assessed and rated.


 Motivation
 The word motivation is derived from the latin
word Movere which means to move

 It’s a psychological concept that mobilises
bodily energy and directs it in selective
fashion to goals in the external environment

 Garry dessior defines motivation as a
reflection of a persons desire to fulfill
certain needs

 Types of motivation
Physiological vs psychogenic

 Physiological motives are oriented towards

satisfying biological or physiological needs of
the individual like hunger,thirst etc

 Psychogenic motives focus on the satisfaction
of their psychological desires such as
seeking achievements or status

 Primary and selective
motives
 A primary influence involves buying behaviuor
directing towards a generic product

 Selective influence guides choices between
products or stores or models

 For eg: a individual decides to purchase a TV is
a primary influence but to decide which model to

buy is a selective influence

 Conscious and unconscious
motives

 Conscious motives are ones the consumers

are quite aware

 Unconscious motives influence consumers
but they are not aware of them
 Rational vs emotional motives

 Rational motives are those where people

behave rationally in making purchases
considering all alternatives

 Emotional motives imply selection of goals
according to personal or subjective
criteria like pride,status etc
 Positive vs negative motives
 If they have positive influence on
consumers,they are positive motives and if
it’s a negative influence it’s a negative
motive

 Positive influences attract consumers towards
desired goals while negative ones direct
them away from desirable consequences

 Positive motives are needs,wants,desires etc
whereas negatives are fears or aversions

 The role of motives in CB
Defining basic striving


 Motives influence consumers in identifying

their basic strivings

 Basic strivings include general goals such as
safety,affiliation,achievements and other
states which consumer seek to achieve

 To guide behaviour in a general way across
wide variety of decisions and activities

 Identifying goal objects
 Consumers think products and services as
their goal objects and not as a means of
satisfying their motives

 Identifying products and services as goal
objects is of great importance to marketers
as they can be influenced

 The promotional efforts also will be targetted
to these goal objects

 Influencing choice criteria

 Product features influence the consumers

choice criteria

 Marketers need to explain the product features
to influence their choice

 Marketer also can inform consumers about a
particular criteria and how well the product
meets the criteria
 Directing other influences
 At a more fundamental level motives affect
the individual determinants of perception,
learning, personality, attitudes and how
people process information

 It also results in directional influences on
behaviour eg:Motives influence information
process info processing and ultimately the
inferences

 Consumer perception

 Perception can be described as the process

by which an individul selects, organizes and
interprets stimuli into a meaninful and
coherant picture of the world

 A motivated person works to the best of his
ability,but how he actually acts depends
upon the perception of the situation
 Sensation
 It’s the immediate and and direct response of
the sensory organs to simple stimuli like an
advertisement, a particular brand etc

 The absolute threshold is the lowest level at
which an individual can experience a
sensation. Its a point which a person can
understand the difference between
something and nothing

 Sensory adaptation and
differential threshold
 A marketer must understand the change
required to create a sensation among
viewers.For eg:A commercial appears in the
same time continously after some period of
time the viewers get used to it that they no
longer see it

 The differential threshold is the minimal
difference that can be detected between
two stimuli or the just noticeable difference
 Marketing application of jnd

 Negative changes like price increase ,reduced

quality etc and not discernable to the public
immediately

 Product improvements are discernable to
consumers without being wastefully
extravagant
 Peceptual selection

 Consumers are by nature selective and they

unconsciously exercise a great deal of
selectivity as regards to different stimuli
present in the environment


 In total people actually percieve only a small

fraction of the stimuli to which they are
exposed
 Factors on which stimuli get
selected
 Nature of the stimulus-Marketing stimuli
include an enormous number of variables
which affect the consumers perceptions
such as the nature of the product,its
physical attributes,branding,packaging etc

 Contrast is one of the most attention drawing
attributes of a stimulus and advertisers
usually use this attention getting device to
achieve the maximum contrast and draw
attention of the consumers

 Expectations and motives
 Consumers expect to see what they used to
see usually based on the past experience or
how they perceive it to be seen

 They tend to perceive products and product
attributes according to their expectations

 Motives or needs perceive things ,the stronger
is the need the greater is the tendency to
receive related stimuli and ignore the
unrelated stimuli in the environment

 Distorting influences on
perception

 Physical appearance-People tend to attribute

qualities they associate with certain people
who may resemble them

 They may consciously recognize the similarity

 Eg:Physical appearance and attraction to a
model are more persuasive and have a
positive influence on customers attitude
 Stereotypes-People tend to carry pictures in
their minds of the meaning of various kinds
of stimulus For eg:an young man is
perceived as a hero bearing all the odds

 The stereotypes serves as expectations of
what specific situations or people or events
will be like

 Recent studies indicate that stereotypes are
changing
  Respected sources-Customers tend to give
added perceptual weight to advice coming
from sources we respect being experts in
their fields


 Marketers while advertising their products use

celebrities or known experts to sponsor their
products or give testimonials to their
products
  Irrelevant Cues-In making a perceptual
judgement consumers often respond to
irrelevant cues or stimuli


 For eg:Many automobiles are not purchsed

for their techinical excellence but for
attractive features like upholsery,flashy
lights etc
 Learning -Definition
 Consumer learning is the process by which
individuals acquire the purchase and
consumption knowledge and they apply to
future related behaviour

 Learning is a never ending process and it
continuously evolves and changes as result
of newly acquired knowledge

 Learning can be viewed as a relatively
permanent change in behaviour occurring as
a result of experience
 Features of learning
 Knowledgecanbeacquiredfromreading,observa
tion or thinking

 Learning is gained either from acquired
knowledge and experience

 Learning can be intentional and incidental

 Learning results in relatively permanent
changes in behaviour
 Types of learning behaviour
 Physical behaviour

 Generally we learn physical behavioural
patterns useful in variety of situations in
every day life

 As consumers we learn methods of responding
different situations while purchasing
products

 Consumers also learn some physical activity
through modelling process imitating
behaviour of their role models in
advertisements
 Symbolic learning and problem
solving
 Symbolic learning is through the development
of languages

 Symbols communicate the message efficiently
to consumers through vehicles as brand
names and signs and symbols

 These symbols carry positive images of the
marketers to the consumers and they easily
identify them

 Affective learning
 Consumers consider certain elements of their
environment valuable and others they
disregard

 Consumers learn from their environment what
are their needs,wants ad goals and what
products satisfy these needs

 On the basis of this learning consumers
develop their favourable and unfavourable
attitute towards their company as well as its
products
 Basic principles of learning

Motives


 Motives arouse individuals,thereby increasing

their readiness to respond

 This arousal function is essential,since it
activates the energy needed to engage in
learning activity

 Motivation is based on needs and goals and
goals and then acts as a spur to learning
with needs and goals serving as stimuli
 Cues
 A cue is viewed as a weak stimulus not strong
enough to arouse customers,but it is capable
of providing direction to already motivated
activity

 Its interesting to note that consumers
frequently about such cues which are
essential before making a purchase

 Cues serve to direct consumers drive when
they conform to consumers expectations
 Response
 A response may be viewed as a mental or
physical activity the consumer makes in
reaction to a stimulus situation

 Response appropriate to a particular situation
are learned through experience over time,in
facing that situation

 Over time learning will modify the response
hierarchy so that other responses have a
chance of occuring
 Re - inforcement
 Reinforcement means the likelihood of
repeating the same response in the future as
result of particular cues or stimulus or in a
similar situation.

 Some theorists are of the view that an explicit
reward for a response is not necessary to
become part of learned behaviour

 Sometimes our behaviour is reinforced subtly
that we may not even be aware of it

 Theories of learning
 Various theories of learning have been
developed to explain different aspects of
learning
 The major groups are 1,Cognitive theories and
2,behavioural theories
 Behavioural theories are also referred as
stimulus response theories as learning takes
place as result of external stimuli
 Behavioural theories are classified on the type
of conditioning in to 1,Classical conditioning
theory and 2,instrumental conditioning
theory

 Classical conditioning theory

 In general the word conditioned has come to

mean an automatic response to a situation
built up through repeated exposure

 A simple association of two objects or stimuli
underlies much of todays advertising

 Ivon pavlov,a russian psychologist has done
extensive studies in to it
 Basic principles of conditioned
learning
 Repetition-
 Consumer may learn a message which
marketers want to impart by repeated
exposure of the same message through
advertising
 This will also familiarize the brand name and
product name to the consumers
 Researches also believe that the repetition
increases the strength of association with
the product and makes slow the process of
forgetting or decay
 Stimulus generalisation

 According to the classical conditioning

theorists learning depends not only on the
repetitions but also on the ability of
individuals to generalise

 Stimulus generalisation explains why imitative
products crowd on to the market after the
introuction of innovative product
 Stimulus discrimination
 Its opposite to stimulus generalisation and
results in the selection of a specific stimulus
from among similar stimulus

 The consumers ability to discriminate among
stimuli is the basis of positioning strategy
which seeks to establish a unique image for
a brand in the consumers mind

 For marketers who enter late the best strategy
for them is to highlight unique characters
and unique price
 Instrumental conditioning theory

 According to BF Skinner most learning takes

place in an effort to control the environment
ie to obtain favourable outcomes

 Instrumental conditioning is to establish
connection between stimulus and response
through trial and error process

 One behaviour of the individual results in more
favourable response than other behaviours

 The reward reinforces the behaviour which
results in more favourable response,its
instrumental in teaching the individual a
specific behaviour that gives him more
control over the outcome

 The consumer tries a number of brands of a
particular product and continues trying until
he find a suitable brand that satisfies him
fulfilling his needs,which he continues to use
 Classical vs Instrumental
 In instrumental learning the experimenter controls
the reward,its action of the subject that causes
reward to happen

 In classsical conditioning the learners response is
involuntary

 In instrumental learning learned response is the
result of trial and error

 Classical conditioning is used to learn very simple
kinds of behaviour whereas instrumental
conditioning is helpful in explaining complex
activities
 Instrumental conditioning and
marketing strategy
 Marketers prefer instrumental learning theory to
classical learning theory as it tends to
describe better than the other how
consumers learn more about goods to be
purchased

 Consumers like to learn great deal of
information before it conditioned to a
particular brand of product

 Eg:purchase of a car needs to have more details
provided to a customer than co and brand
 Cognitive theory of learning
 According to cognitive theorists ,a considerable
amount of learning takes place as a result of
consumer thinking and problem solving

 In cognitive theory the theorists stress the
importance of perception,problem solving
and insight

 The viewpoint says that much learning
happens through mental activity discovering
meaning patterns that enable us to solve
problems
 These meaningful patterns are termed as
gestalts, and cognitive theories rely heavily
on the process of insight to explain the
development of gestalts

 According to cognitive theories ,when an
individual is confronted with a problem we
tend to get tensed and seek a solution
instantly

 More likely we search for information and
carefully evaluate what we learn in to the
best decision
 Information processing

 Like computers human mind is also engaged

in processing of information which it
receives as inputs

 The processed information gets stored in the
human memory

 The process includes how information gets
stored and how it is retrieved
 The structure of memory

 Information processing occurs in stages


 According to one widely accepted view there
are temporary storehouses of information
before they are processed

 In this model there are three separate store
units sensory store,short term store and
long term store

 Sensory store
 All information come only through sense
organs-visual, auditory and sense organs

 The image of sensory input lasts for just a
second or less in minds sensory store and its
lost through unless sufficient attention is
paid to sent it to the short term store

 Eg:if you look at the TV for few seconds and
look away,we retain the image for some
more time.

 Short term store
 It can be viewed as a workplace for information
processing

 It’s a portion of memory activated to
temporary store and process info to interpret
it.

 It’s a storage for brief period say for a minute
or two
 For eg:if someone looks at a no,he forgets it
before even dialing it if its not rehearsed