The Confounding Relationship Between Personality and Consumer Behavior

Equivocal . . . at best

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Research using personality as a factor of market segmentation and a predictor of aspects of consumer behavior may be traced back as far as five decades (Endler & Rosenstein, 1977; Gotlieb, 1958; Koponen, 1960; Westfall, 1962). However, despite early interest, mixed results yielded waxes and wanes in the topic as a focus of research (Baumgartner, 2002; Bosnjak, Bratko, Galesic & Tuten, 2007). Nonetheless, the intuitive appeal of assuming a fundamental link between the construct of personality and facets of consumer behavior is evidenced by the more than 300 studies reviewed by Kassarjian and Sheffet (1991).

Those on both sides of the marketing equation — advertisers and consumers — each fundamentally and intuitively operate under the assumption that advertising exerts influence. It is why advertisers continue to spend billions on sending the message, and why consumers at least claim to either embrace or reject the messages with which they are constantly assaulted. The underlying assumption is that there is, in some measure, an ability to affect behavior. The intricacies of how this is accomplished, however, remain somewhat of an enigma, as is exemplified by the famous quote, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which…