A consumer’s personality refers to an amalgamation of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that give them their distinctive character. The link between personality and marketing is partly highlighted by operant conditioning behaviours whereby consumers repeat actions that are self-affirming and produce positive outcomes (Kumar and Nayak, 2018). At the same time, they also avoid participating in actions that have negative reinforcements. Operant conditioning explains the link between personality and marketing practices because consumers can easily adopt behaviours or styles that promote their personality types by purchasing products that help them to do so (Denissen et al., 2018). Those that align with their personality types are often regarded as producing positive outcomes, while those that are inconsistent with them are disregarded or rejected.
The relationship between personality and purchasing behaviours has a profound impact on lifestyle marketing because it magnifies individual attributes on the back of strong aesthetics, ideals and aspirations of the target market. Usually, marketing strategies or efforts designed to promote this type of branding strategy revolve around a common ideology or meaning shared by the target audience. Relative to this assertion, Watson et al. (2018) demonstrate that operant conditioning occurs in three formats: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Positive reinforcement is observed when symbolic consumption occurs, or when the marketing message aligns with a consumer’s attitudes and personality type. For example, a perfume that smells good could positively reinforce the personality of someone keen on making a good first impression. Similarly, negative reinforcement could be realized when there is a missed opportunity to wear the same perfume (Watson et al., 2018). The last type of reinforcement is punishment, which could be observed when the same person wearing the perfume is made fun of (Chicas-Mosier and Abramson, 2015). Collectively, these three types of operant conditioning have a significant impact on how consumers perceive a specific good or service. More importantly, they highlight the attitude that a marketer should adopt when selling a product or service because of the link between personality and marketing practices. Based on this relationship, most marketing strategies developed today focus on drawing a link between marketing stimuli and consumer responses.
Due to the existence of the link between personality and marketing practices, different companies have adopted strategies that appeal to unique consumer interests and preferences. For example, some of them have exclusively focused on developing marketing strategies that appeal to unique consumer hedonic needs, while others use novel stimuli to generate market interest about a product or service (Gauns et al., 2018; Watson et al., 2018). Relationship marketing techniques have also been adopted to cement the link between personality and marketing practices by highlighting the modalities to follow in achieving the same objective (Chicas-Mosier and Abramson, 2015). Pursuing celebrity endorsements and developing products that may have a cult following are other approaches that companies have used to exploit the link between personality and marketing. Particularly, celebrity endorsements have been used as an effective link in lifestyle marketing because companies often contract celebrities who share a similar lifestyle, behaviours, or embody the aspirations of the target audience (Derdenger, Li, and Srinivasan, 2018). Therefore, consumers find it easy to relate with such personalities, thereby increasing a company’s product or brand value.
Lastly, few companies have succeeded in establishing a link between personality and brand development by developing products that have a strong cult-like following. However, those that have done so have benefitted from heightened levels of customer loyalty because their products align with the personalities of the target audience (Donnelly et al., 2015). For example, Apple has developed products, such as the iPhone, which have a massive following in the market, thereby promoting the idea that the company is not a brand but rather a religious cult (Berger, 2019). Evidence of this claim stems from the existence of thousands of loyal fans who line up at Apple’s stores to buy the latest phone, whenever there is a new product launch. The same followers believe in the vision of the company’s founder Steve Jobs, which is centered on adopting futuristic designs and uses of technology. These brand personality traits account for Apple’s success and profitability, which have been sustained for many years, regardless of its competitors’ actions, including new smartphone launches and the launch of negative advertisement campaigns. Overall, this analysis shows that there is a strong link between personality types and marketing strategies.
Reference List
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Denissen, J. J. A. et al. (2018) ‘Uncovering the power of personality to shape income’, Psychological Science, 29(1), pp. 3-13.
Derdenger, T. P., Li, H. and Srinivasan, K. (2018) ‘Firms’ strategic leverage of unplanned exposure and planned advertising: an analysis in the context of celebrity endorsements’, Journal of Marketing Research, 55(1), pp. 14-34.
Donnelly, C. et al. (2015) ‘Digital loyalty card ‘big data’ and small business marketing: formal versus informal or complementary?’, International Small Business Journal, 33(4), pp. 422-442.
Gauns, K. K. et al. (2018) ‘Impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer buying behavior in the state of Goa’, IIM Kozhikode Society and Management Review, 7(1), pp. 45-58.
Kumar, V. and Nayak, J. K. (2018) ‘Destination personality: scale development and validation’, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, 42(1), pp. 3-25.
Watson, G. F. et al. (2018) ‘International market entry strategies: relational, digital, and hybrid approaches’, Journal of International Marketing, 26(1), pp. 30-60.