Personal Self Concept in Consumer Psychology - Essay Example

CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY INTRODUCTION Consumer behaviour is an important aspect in the overall marketing of the product. Consumer behaviour is a broader concept and there are several sub concepts and this report analyses and discusses some of the most important concepts related to consumer behaviour such as; personal self concept, social self concept, symbolic consumption, needs on consumer choices, reference group and cultural group (Blackwell, R., Miniard, and Engel, 2006). The report not only defines these concepts but also uses examples. PERSONAL SELF CONCEPT Personal self concept can be described as the image or an idea that a consumer has in his mind about himself. It determines for the consumer, how he sees himself. Personal self image is formed by the sense of identity, the feelings of self worth and self esteem (Blackwell, Miniard, and Engel, 2006). It can be explained as what qualities and attributes, one associate to his personality in order to define himself. This self-concept of an individual can be reflected through the choices he makes for himself. These choices are not just related to the decisions he made in his routinely life but this can be observed by every single gesture that he makes. Each action of an individual makes a specific statement about that person. While determining personal self-concept, the choices of products that one makes, also reveal much about a consumer and his needs. For example, a smoker, who has a personal self image about himself, to be a kind of a person who likes to be isolated, aloof, and lonely with nature or he associates himself to the cow-boyish image, he would rather prefer to have Malboro cigarettes. He would feel himself much related to Malboro’s brand and its advertisements. He would associate with that brand personality in a much better manner than any other consumer not having such attributes (Gehrt & Yan, 2004). SOCIAL SELF CONCEPT Social self concept can be described as how consumers feel that others and society see them. This is how society interprets a person’s image and how society evaluates the choices of products and services made by an individual (De Mooij, 2011). For example if a husband chooses to gift his wife a Tiffany’s diamond ring on their anniversary publically in a party, then people would make an image about that husband, as him to be a very caring, loving and concerned husband. This is how consumer of a product would feel people think of himself. There is another concept that lies within the domains of social self concept is the ideal social self image, this concept is defined as an individual’s desire to be seen as socially. It is how a consumer wants others to see him. Most of the choices made by consumers do fall in this category as well, because consumers sometimes want to establish an image for themselves in the society. Sometimes if a consumer is maintaining a very high profile lifestyle and suddenly he strikes to a product that appeals him a lot and he likes that too but he decides to refrain from buying that product just because it might hamper his social image. For example, if a person who owns Mercedes Benz, has established an elite image about him in the society, suddenly starts liking Volks wagon, despite of his liking he would not by that car as it would not help in maintain his social image in the society. He might buy that car, but he would not be using that car, that frequently or publically as it would not deliver the consistent or same message about his personality in his surroundings. This is because he has an ideal social self image in his mind to be perceived as elite, upper class person (Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2009). How a person uses social media sites is also an example of how one wants others to see him as. If someone posts stuff regarding being environmental friendly, then it is because he wants others to see him as a person who cares about his nature, environment and surroundings. Such as person may prefer using products from Body Shop, as they use natural ingredients and do not test their products on animals being ethical with their surroundings. This concept can also be related to the concept of Symbolic consumption (Neal, Quester, & Hawkins, 2004). INFLUENCE OF SYMBOLIC CONSUMPTION The idea of symbolic consumption is defined as when product purchases of a consumer are largely influenced by emotional driving factors rather than functional driving factors (Desmond, 2003). This is also one of the reasons why brands today are focusing more on establishing relationships with consumers emotionally rather than just on functional basis by informing them of features, attributes and benefits of the products (East, Wright, and Vanhuele, 2008). Brands today are trying to create associations with their target market by getting involved in every possible effort that can allow them to engage with their audience in effective and long lasting manners. The new marketing and promotional techniques used by brand to create emotional bonding such as organising concerts for their users, flash mobs, creating blogs for consumers interactions, developing mobile applications, branded entertainment, all such and other efforts are designed to strengthened brand relationship with its customers. Consumers adopt these products in symbolic consumptions as they perceive those products to be part of their identity. They want themselves to be associated as a user of that product (Evans, Jamal, and Foxall, 2009). An example of symbolic consumption may be a person who always buys bags or any other product from a premium brand such as Louis Vuitton, not because she needed a bag for herself or its quality is superb but because she wants to deliver a statement about her personality that she is a user of premium brand. She has some emotional linkage with this brand rather than just admirer of a brand. She might be buying that product for higher self esteem (O’Dougherty, Haynes, Davies, & O’Connor, 2007). INFLUENCE OF LEVEL OF NEEDS ON CONSUMER CHOICES Likewise many of consumers’ choices for brands do vary according to their need levels. As proposed by Maslow hierarchy of needs, individuals have varied needs, namely (Pachauri, 2002): Physiological need Security needs Social need Esteem needs Self actualisation needs As discussed earlier, a lady buying Louis Vuitton bags may be falling in esteem needs, to show her as premium brand user and to make a statement about her in society. Likewise individual’s choices would be varying for products depending on in what category or level of need they fall in. the basic level of need is physiological need that means need to survive which involves a person’s basic necessities such as food, water, shelter, clothing. If a person is buying these things to continue his living then it is because he falls in the basic level of need. Such as having Nescafe’s or any other brand’s coffee at breakfast at home may be because of physiological need, if a person have a healthy coffee brand daily just because he knows that this coffee help him in keeping him healthy and secures him from health issues then his choice may be because he falls under security needs, if a situation is such that a person is having coffee at Starbucks with friends in Starbucks’s typical café ambiance may be because of social need as one wants to hang out with friends and want to strengthened his relationships with others and if a person chooses to go to a five star hotel to have a coffee then he might be having esteem need, as he want to make a statement about his lifestyle. The product is the same that is coffee, but individual’s choices of which brand to have it off, do vary according to their level of need. And if a person makes coffee just because he enjoys making coffee and is also creative in making coffee by adding something new to his coffee anytime he makes and then have it and shares them to all, this may be because of his need of self actualisation and the talent he has in making coffee recopies (Peter and Olson, 2008). INFLUENCE OF REFERENCE GROUP Reference group is defined as a group of people whose attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, opinions, preferences and values are used by an individual as a basis for his or her judgment. While making choices of products and brands, it does play a very important role, as many consumers trust reference group more than general advertisements of brands as it has greater credibility and reduced risk when consumers hear or get to know about a brand’s information and details from the people they trust the most. It creates greater brand awareness. People belonging to reference group may be a person’s friends, family, co-workers, favourite celebrity or any other person of whom he is aware of. This is one of the reasons why many brands make use of well known celebrities for their brand endorsements because their target market trusts that celebrity the most thus it increases a brand’s credibility. For example Rolex uses Roger Federer as its brand ambassador, it’s not just because of the fact that his personality matches the brand’s personality that is high on need for achievement, it’s also because Roger Federer has great fan following throughout the world and when he endorses something that really means huge and highly trustable for his fans. This kind of reference group is known as Aspirational reference group, it means the group like whom individuals want to be (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2010). Associative reference group is a group of individuals who are more close, or equal to a person. This includes a person’s co workers and neighbours, members of clubs, organisations or churches. When a person is considering buying a car that his co-worker is having, he goes to him and ask about that car and then when he gets to know about problems that his co-worker is facing while using a brand’s product then he decides not to buy that particular car by trusting on all the information that his co-worker has provided to him. Word of mouth plays a very important role here in reference group (Schiffman, Kanuk, and Hansen, 2011). There is another type of reference group known as dissociative reference group, this group includes which an individual avoids and don’t want to be like them. May be a celebrity that a person hates the most endorses a brand, then that individual would always avoid that brand to buy just because it is endorsed by a person he does not like or support. Marketers should avoid using such celebrities that are commonly dislikes by the masses (Solomon, Bamossy, Askegaard, and Hogg, 2010). INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL GROUP Each country and nation has distinctive culture which varies amazingly from the cultures of other nations. There are many countries that have number of sub cultures within one culture and each of the sub culture has its own beauty and essence. Cultural values tell a person what he stands for, what he should be doing and what actions of him would be considered acceptable by the society or culture (Solomon, 1995). For example India is a large country that has number of sub cultures prevailing in it. Consumer’s choices, preferences, values and beliefs do vary according to their cultural groups. So marketers while making and designing products for a particular region, must have deep understanding about that region’s culture and its people. This concept is very important for multi-national firms who are operating in multiple countries. For them to be successful in every region where they operate they must understand every possible information about that culture. For example, considering India, that is one big nation, has varied cultures and varied people. There are people who are non-vegetarians and then there are also people who are vegetarian, there are large amount of middle class and price conscious people’s market there. Mcdonalds in India revised their menu and brought a localised marketing strategy there by updating their menu according to Indian masses needs (De Mooij, 2011). They introduced Mc Aloo Tiki burger that means potato burger, which is not only good at prices that is affordable by masses and is also liked by vegetarian population there. They have Extra Value meals that are good at prices, they have fish burgers that are good for people who don’t prefer eating white or red meat. They have Mcveggie, Veg Mcmuffin burgers for vegetarian segment. They also have chicken menu that has all chicken burgers, nuggets. They have also added fresh salads, to cater to health conscious, diet conscious and vegetarian segment of people. As in metropolitan areas of the country, people have now become diet conscious to maintain their appearance and health. This is because of the varied cultures that India has that Mcdonalds had to revise their marketing strategy. Just like Mcdonald, other multi-national firms are also revising their strategies according to the countries where they are operating. Same is the case when coca-cola was re-launched in India, in 1993 when they came back to India, after 13 years of absences, initially they continued the western marketing campaigns in India, but it was not producing results for them, then the marketing manager realised where they are lacking and eventually came up with localised marketing strategy for India, where they realised that India is divided into two broad socio economic segments, which they divided as India A that was upper class of India, belonging to big and metropolitan cities which contributed to only 4% of the total population, here people need was social belongings and esteem. Whereas India B, was middle and lower class of India, which was the larger segment comprising of 96% of the total population which belonged to smaller cities and villages, here people need for soft drink was thirst quenching (De Mooij, 2011). By understanding of the difference of sub-culture, they came up with two marketing campaigns: for India A, the slogan was –(Life Ho Tou Aisi that means life as it should be) here more inspirational feel was given to the promotion where friends were shown enjoying life together with coke. And in India B, the slogan was- (Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola that means cold drink means only coca cola) here they tried to make cold drink and coca cola similar words to grab the larger portion of product category because here their main competitors were not only other soft drinks such as Pepsi but also all cheap cold beverages that are available in the market and also those which are made at home. As this was the price conscious segment so they preferred to have cheap drinks. To cater to that coca cola introduced a smaller bottle of 250ml for India B, that was priced at Rs-5/ which was very affordable for this segment as the difference between the traditional cold beverages and coca cola was minimal, whereas for India A, coca cola had a bottle of 300 ml that was priced at Rs-8/ (De Mooij, 2011). The variance in positioning of brand was done by identifying the culture of both socio economic segments. Besides that, coca cola at the same time had a marketing campaign featuring Indian Bollywood Actor Amir Khan, where he adapted the roles of various cultures of India, such as Bengali, Behari, Nepali, Marathi and lot of other cultures of India to give coca cola a feel of a brand made for India (De Mooij, 2011). CONCLUSION This essay illustrates how consumer behaviours and choices are affected through many factors. These factors include individual’s perception about himself and social self concept. Influence of Symbolic consumption, cultural groups and reference groups on consumer behaviour. All these factors play an essential role in determining consumer’s buying behaviour for a particular brand. Marketers today need to understand these very well, in order to design products and promotional strategies to make their brand more relevant and appealing for their target consumers. External and internal factors all work together to shape consumer’s behaviour, values, beliefs and attitudes. If these factors are best utilised by brands, they can make their brand stronger in the market and to take competitive advantage over competitors by gaining a distinctive place in the minds of consumers which other competitors do not have. List of References Blackwell, R., Miniard, P., and Engel, J. (2006). Consumer Behaviour 10th Edition. Mason, OH: Thomson South Western De Mooij, M. (2011). Consumer Behaviour and Culture: Consequences for Global Marketing and Advertising. 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