Personality and the Determinants of Product Choice

Market segmentation according to amount of product usage, demographics, social class, personality, and product attribute preference has been suggested in the literature [7, 8, 10, 17], but the role of personality in determining product choices is particularly controversial. Attempts to show that purchasers of different products or brands have different personality traits have met with limited practical success, although a relationship between usage of various products and the buyer's personality profile has been shown [13]. If users of various products or brands have different personalities (and nonpsychological characteristics) and thus respond more to appeals structured to their particular needs, they might purchase the same product for different reasons. If product attributes that determine their choices are somehow related to their personality structures, specific appeals might be aimed at particular personality types. Ideally, an entire marketing mix could be designed for different psychological segments, particularly if different types of people not only want different attributes in a product, but also expose themselves to different media, live in different locations, and so forth. However, even without isolating psychological segments, appeals directed at various personality types as market segments might still achieve stronger effects than bland ones aimed at a mass market.