Personal factors: A buyer decisions also are influenced by personal characteristics such as the buyer’s age life-cycle stage, occupation, economic situation, lifestyle and personality and self-concept.
Age and life-cycle stage: People change the goods and services they buy over their lifetimes. Tastes in food, clothes, furniture, and recreation are often age related. Buying is also shaped by the stage of the family life-cycle—the stage through which families might pass as they mature over time. Marketers often define their target markets in terms of life-cycle stage and develop appropriate products and marketing plans for each stage.
Occupation: A person’s occupation affects the goods and services bought. Blue-collar workers tend to buy more rugged work clothes, whereas executives buy more business suits. Marketers try to identify the occupational groups that have an above-average interest in their products and services. A company can even specialize in making products needed by a given occupational group.
Economic situation: A person’s economic situation will affect product choice. Marketers of income-sensitive goods watch trends in personal savings and interest rates. If economic indicators point to a recession, marketers can take steps to redesign, reposition and reprise their product closely.
Lifestyle: Lifestyle of a person’s pattern of living as expressed in his or her psychographics. It involves measuring consumers’ major AIO dimensions—activities (work, hobbies, shopping, sports, social events), interests (food, fashion, family, recreation), and opinions (about themselves, social issues, business products).
Personality and Self-Concept:
Personality refers to the unique psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent and lasting responses to one’s own environment. Personality is usually described in terms of traits such as self-confidence, dominance, sociability, autonomy, defensiveness, adaptability and aggressiveness. Personality can be useful in analyzing consumer behavior for certain product or brand choice.
A brand personality is the specific mix of human traits that may be attributed a particular brand. One researcher identified five brand personality traits;
Sincerity (down-to-earth, wholesome, and cheerful).
Excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative, and up-to-date.
Competence (reliable, intelligent, and successful0.
Sophistication (upper class charming).
Ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough).
