Ethical Issues In Consumer Research

KUNAL THAKKAR
DM17119

Personality does not matter to marketing practitioners
When marketing practitioners use the word personality, usually it refers to the personality of a brand. For example: Mainland China can be considered a sophisticated brand as it has established its image as a premium restaurant and hence it has the liberty to justify the prices of each dish. But apart from brands, researchers also refer to other personality aspects too. Online marketing strategist Adam Hayes, described four personality traits shown by Customers (1) :
• Analytical - The customers who fall under this category are usually well organized and systematic. They rely a lot on the information and facts presented in a logical manner as a proof for a standard

(3) Every personality aspect given to customers by leading marketing experts can be questioned. For example, the idea of ethical customer (one whose purchase decisions minimize social and environmental damage) can be questioned. During a research which involved questioning customers about their decisions being based on the facts and information provided about the product, some respondents said it won’t make much of a difference and a majority of them said it would confuse them further. This may point to the fact that the concept of a sophisticated consumer is fading. But overall distinguishing on the basis of personality is done by almost all leading firms. Sometimes even segmentation in its own way is a means of distinguishing on the basis of personality. For example: Behavioral segmentation is done by categorizing customers based on their decision pattern, usage and their behavior. It is using this type of segmentation that lifebuoy has a higher chance of appealing more to athletes and dove is focused on young people who are very self-conscious. Another example of this could be Samsung appealing more to the young population who like androids and apple to the working class niche people.

The results implicated that service employees are expected to behave consistently with all customers, but customer show varying emotions. Hence sometimes a customer might show a different personality which is unusual. The impulse buying displayed by ‘drivers’ who generally shop smartly is an example of varying personality trait.
Hence it can be concluded keeping in mind the above mentioned facts and points that though personality is an important aspect for marketing practitioners, categorizing customers on the basis of the personality traits has its own drawbacks since customers can show varied behavior and that makes the job of a marketing practitioner even tougher since varied behavior prediction is extremely difficult. It is due to this reason that firms like Starbucks give their employees a lot of liberty for spontaneous decision making since that helps them to act according to the situation during the Point of