Business Administration 3321K Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Ernest Dichter, Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan
4 May 2016
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Lecture 5
Week 4 Slides:
Slide 18: Personality
• A person’s unique psychological makeup and how it consistently
influences the way a person responds to his/her environment
o Proven difficult to apply in marketing contexts
o Stable vs. situation-specific
• You get someone well is by living with them or working with them
o seeing them under certain levels of stress
o not consistent situations
• 5 Factor Model of Psychology
o very abstract concepts → when you have something that’s
completely abstract and you’re using it to predict something
very specific…. You don’t typically get much explanation (low
explanatory power)
o It’s hard to predict how they shop, what they buy, when they
shop… etc.
▪ Extroversion
▪ Neuroticism
▪ Conscientiousness
▪ Agreeableness
▪ Openness
• Personality does affect behaviour & choice
• Marketers instead of Big 5 Model like to use lifestyles:
o Leisure activities, political outlook, aesthetic tastes, etc.
o Surrogates for personality
o AIO dimensions
Slide 19: Theories on Personality & Behaviour
• Sigmund Freud: Behaviour stems from conflict between gratification
& responsibility (psychoanalyst)
• Freudian theory:
o Unconscious needs or drives are at the heart of human
motivation (we are not even aware they drive our behaviour,
we just believe that they do)
o Freudian slip: when you say one thing, but it comes out as
another (hidden message)
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o Id: Selfish (pleasure principle) (being driven by immediate
gratification needs regardless of the circumstance)
▪ E.x. Ashley Madison website
o Superego : our conscience (Moral principle) (what is the
appropriate way of acting as a member of society)
▪ E.x. If you want to be a rock star but that’s not
realistic, then you can play guitar ego to imagine
our that lifestyle vicariously
o Ego: mediates between id and superego (reality principle)
tries to find acceptable ways of satisfying the ID and
superego)
▪ E.x. Don’t drink and drive
Slide 21: Theories on Personality & Behaviour
• Marketing Implications:
o Unconscious motives underlying purchases
o Freudian ideas unlock deeper product and advertisement
meanings
o Symbolism in product to compromise id and superego
▪ Sports car as sexual gratification for men
▪ Phallic Symbol
▪ Hidden messages in marketing to trigger an underlying
desire
Slide 22: Motivational Research
• Consumers are not always aware of, or may not wish to recognize,
the basic reasons underlying their actions
• Earnest Dichter
• Projective Techniques:
o Metaphor analysis
o Story telling
o Picture drawing
o Photo sorts
o Thematic Apperception Tests (what you see in an ambiguous
picture might reveal something about yourself)
o Word Association
o Sentence Completion
o Third-Person Technique
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o Quantitative Measures
Slide 23: Retail Therapy (article on OWL)
• Ernest Dichter
o Revolutionized the way that we sell things
o he would get people and bring them into his lab, and got
them to talk about why they bought certain brands
o first person to invent/utilize the focus group
o believes we do not buy things for utilitarian reasons
o Marketplace decisions are driven by emotions, and
subconscious whims and fears
▪ often have little to do with the product itself!
o 1930s-1960s: Dichter changed the way that products were
sold
▪ Focus groups, word-of-mouth persuasion
▪ Motivational research
▪ Criticized for teaching companies techniques to
manipulate people
Slide 25: Dichter to advertise
• Chrysler cars: men want convertible (“bait”) but eventually select
sensible sedan (influence of spouse)
o Advertising in magazines targeting women
• Typewriter sales: would increase if modeled (curves) on the female
body
• Smoking as primordial urge to breastfeed
• Baking a cake is like giving birth
o Hence addition of an egg to mix (symbolic of fertility)
• Every object has a special meaning – one that often relates to sex,
insecurity, or a desire for prestige
o To assuage consumer “guilt”: tobacco/candy are “rewards” for
the hard-working
Slide 26: Symbolism
• baking a came, “something from the oven” → relates to a woman
being pregnant → Pillsbury boy is apparently a baby
• Tiger on ads = compliments masculinity
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Slide 19: theories on personality & behaviour: sigmund freud: behaviour stems from conflict between gratification. Ashley madison website: superego : our conscience (moral principle) (what is the appropriate way of acting as a member of society, e. x. Slide 31: karen horney"s cad theory: developed from the context of child- parent relationships. Slide 32: theories in personality & behaviour measures: advertising messages: often invoke archetypes, when you brand is healthy/well perceived, the good characteristics will overpower shadow characteristics, ex. Mcdonald"s ronal mcdonald clown used to be seen as a happy/fun clown, and now it is seen as an evil clown that feeds children junk food. Slide 34: trait theory: problems with trait theory, prediction of product choices using traits of consumers is mixed at best, scales not valid/reliable, tests borrow scales used for the mentally ill inappropriate. Slide 39: brand personality: distinctive brand personality = brand loyalty, animism, level 1: brand = spokespersons and loved ones.
