Motivation and Personality

BA 362 - Fall 2000

Why do consumers behave the way they do? What are consumers trying to accomplish?

Choices made to achieve goals; understanding goals provides strategic focus

But, consumers have many different types of goals– Utilitarian, hedonic, social

Further, consumers' goals are not always obvious - Polaroid pocket camera

Different groups have different goals, different ways of satisfying the same goals– e.g., cultural differences in goals of individuality

vs. interdependence and low-smoke cigarettes Understanding consumers' goals is critical

Hot New Research - Choosing deviance or uniqueness (Heejung Kim and Hazel Markus, “Deviance or Uniqueness, Harmony or Conformity? A Cultural Analysis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999, 77, 785-800)

Western cultures value uniqueness and individuality more than Eastern cultures, which value interdependence and conformity

Kim and Markus carry out several studies to examine this proposition and find

– When judging abstract figures composed of subfigures, Americans prefer the more unique subfigures and Asians prefer the more common subfigures

– When choosing among pens of two different colors, Asians more often chose the pen of the more common color; Americans chose the pen with the less common color more often

– In an ad coding study, Korean magazine ads focus more on harmony and conformity themes, whereas American magazine ads focus more on uniqueness appeals

What can we say about the intensity of consumers' goals?

Consumers have different levels of involvement (self-relevance), and different levels of involvement have different consequences– Attention, elaboration, search, content vs. style focus,

attitude change, accuracy vs. effort Most products have high and low involvement

segments, which can depend upon the situation Strategy may vary based upon involvement

– Differences in tactics for high vs. low involvement, what is possible (e.g., product characteristics, ad budget, segment size)

– Accepting vs. trying to build involvement– Policy issues (e.g., amount of attention paid)

How can we analyze consumers' motivations?

We can consider several different levels (needs, benefits, features)

Benefits are a good focus for marketing issues– Measuring benefits– Communicating benefits - laddering, consumer language

Benefits need not be conscious– Motivation research– New qualitative techniques

– e.g., "Brand personality must be managed...”– indirect methods instead of direct questioning

(madeforchina.com)– “archetype” research and the PT Cruiser

Choice of focal benefit Issues in determining consumers’ wants and needs -

risks of self-disclosure, methods for increasing self-disclosure

Hot New Research - increasing disclosure (Youngme Moon, “Intimate Exchanges: Using Computers to Elicit Self-Disclosure from Consumers,” Journal of Consumer Research, 2000, 323-339)

Moon investigates using computers to elicit intimate information from consumers (e.g., what do you hate about yourself, what have you done you feel most guilty about)

She argues that people treat computers as social actors and that one can apply principles of reciprocity from human relationships to computer disclosure

She finds that consumers reveal a greater amount that is also more intimate (as rated by judges) when the computer reveals something about “itself” first (e.g., that it is slow relative to other computers) and when the most intimate questions are preceded by lower intimacy questions

She also finds that consumers rate products higher when they are are presented on the same computer on which their “interview” was conducted (as compared to the same products presented on a different computer)

What is the relationship between products and the self?

Products have “personalities” and can convey something about the self

What do products mean to people?– Attachment (e.g., t-shirts)

Products can be extensions of the self, can reflect or help define identity– Multiple aspects of self– Impression management

As we have seen, different cultures may have different views of the self