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Unit 4: Consumer Personality

likely to consider others’ views and show least sensitivity toward prices. They are also Notes
inclined to seek novelty, take risks and time horizon is indefinite in making decisions.
Alfred Adler took a separate direction. He was the foremost proponent of social orientation in
the development of personality. Instead of emphasising the importance of sexual conflicts like
Freud or culturally shared meaning of Jung, he focused on the importance of an individual’s
striving for obtaining superiority in a social context. Alfred Adler viewed human beings as
striving to attain various rational goals, which he referred as style of life. He also stressed that
children develop the feelings of inferiority and as adults their foremost goal is to win over these
feelings; in other words, strive for superiority. Another neo-Freudian psychologists, Harry
Stack Sullivan, emphasised that human beings perpetually strive to establish significant and
rewarding relationships which serves as the fundamental factor in shaping up an individual’s
personality. He and Karen Horney were particularly concerned with the individual’s efforts to
reduce tensions, such as anxiety.
According to Joel B Cohen, Karen Horney identified ten major needs which individuals acquire
as a result of striving to find solutions to their problems in developing personality and dealing
with others in society. Based on these ten needs she classified three major approaches individuals
adopt for coping with anxiety: Compliant, Aggressive and Detached (CAD).
1. Compliant individuals are those who move toward people and stress the need for love,
affection, approval and modesty. Such individuals exhibit empathy, humility and are
unselfish.

2. Aggressive individuals are those who move against people and emphasise the need for
power, admiration, strength and the ability to manipulate others.
3. Detached individuals are those who move away from others and desire independence,
freedom from obligations and self-reliance. They do not develop strong emotional ties
with others.
Joel B Cohen measured CAD using 35-item inventory and found some tentative relationships
between CAD types and product/brand usage. “Compliant” individuals seemed to prefer known
brands and use more mouthwash and toilet soaps; “aggressive” types used more cologne and
after-shave lotion and preferred to use Van Heusen shirts and Old Spice deodorant (because of
its masculine appeal?); and “detached” types seemed to have least awareness of brands, drank
more tea. Mark Salama, Terrel Williams and Armen Tashchian have reported that the “detached”
personality type seems to have low-involvement in purchasing than “compliant” or “aggressive”
types.

Caution Social theories are also known as Non-freudian theories and it contains views of
many social theorists who belonged to Non-freudian school.

4.1.3 Trait Theory

Trait theory states that human personality is composed of a set of traits that describe general
response patterns. These theories are relatively recent in origin and use very popular personality
concepts to explain consumer behaviour. The orientation, unlike previously discussed theories,
is quantitative or empirical. J P Guilford describes a trait as any distinguishing and relatively
enduring way in which one individual differs from another. The concept is that traits are general
and relatively stable characteristics of personality that influence behavioural tendencies. The
concept can be summed up in three assumptions:

1. Behavioural tendencies in individuals are relatively stable.
2. A limited number of traits are common to most individuals. They differ only in the degree
to which they have these tendencies.

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