Developing a Marketing Strategy

Factors influencing behaviour of Personality & Self-concept

Personality:

The main factors that influence buyers behaviour are: Taken from Kotler et al

Cultural >> Social >> Personal >> Psycological

Culture >> Reference >> Age & Life cycle >> Motivation
Groups stage Perception
Occupation
Subculture >> Family >> Economic >> Learning Beliefs & Attitudes
circumstances
Lifestyle
Social Class >> Roles & Status >> Personality & Self-concept >>

There are many traits to personality. This includes different characteristics of individuals for example shy, quiet, outgoing and confident.

Theories on Personality:

Hollander's research into Personality

Hollander's research has established four aspects which help define personality.
The aspects are:

*The External aspect- This illustrates how a person interacts with other people

*The Internal aspect- This is a combination of people's values and attitudes

*The Dynamic aspect- This is when people face new situations and how they behave, for example social adjustments

*The Consistent aspect- People's characteristic style

Cattell's Trait Theory of Personality:

This theory looks at the different personality attitudes people have. It illustrates the negative attitudes to the positive. Examples are given below:

Reserved >>>> Outgoing

Less intelligent >>>> More intelligent

Relaxed >>>> Tensed

Serious >>>> Happy-go-lucky

Horney (1945) Theory:

This theory has established that personality develops from the level of anxiety for example felt as being a dependant child. This can lead to turning away from others e.g. isolation, indifference, Detached and going towards others e.g. affection, affiliation, compliant.

Self-concept:

Self concept influences the person's perception of the world around it.

Self concept does not have to reflect reality,for example, a person who is regarded by others as successful may percieve as being a failure.

Solomon 1999, states that self concept represents a belief that a peron holds about his/her attributes, therefore this impacts on how he/she evaluates those qualities. Self concept impacts on indivduals because it is what they think about themselves for example a regular teenager who not believe she is perfect due to the influence of celebrities, teenagers tend to believe a size 0 will help them fit in within the society, this fact influences on the an individuals self concept. Social aspects impact on the younger generation more as they tend to follow the trend. Self concept makes individuals believe what they would like to become and how this will impact on them, therefore the important factors that are involved in this are:

*Self image
*Self esteem
*Ideal self

Self image



Self image impacts people becuase this is how they tend to see themselves, in which they judge the positive and negative attributes about themselves.

These three factors impact on individuals in different ways depending on person to person as everyone is affected by these factors a positive or negative way.

Researchers on Self-concept:

Mead (1934)- states that self concept is formed directly from social experience, the reaction from others and the social & cultural values which are internalised.

Goffman (1959)- states that self-concept is reflected as a social role experience e.g.daughter and wife.

William James (1890)- states that self concept differentiates from social comparisons e.g. family and peers.

Self-concept relates to three main factors which are Self-image, Self-esteem and Ideal-self.

Self image represents the kind of person who we think we are, this involves body image & personality traits.
Ideal self represents the kind of person we would like to be e.g.a successful person
Self esteem represents whether we accept or approve of the our self image that we present to others.