People have been trying to study human behavior for a long time. From Hippocrates’ theory of bodily fluids and Harry Potter houses to Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, or other personality theories, there are a lot of ways to measure and describe personalities. In this blog, we’ll see one way to do it. Understanding human behavior is crucial to modern business. Getting your customers to stare at an inkblot may not ever be useful to you because there’s no way you can quantify their responses. But measurable data about individual traits that affect buying behaviors certainly will.
A few popular theories
Lots of research in personality traits show how customers experience service interactions to form opinions and memories of those encounters.
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and George Loewenstein take from behavioral theorists like Watson to explain how people make decisions in different contexts. Which has paved the way for more research and practice in business. The idea is to architect suitable contexts at different touchpoints in the buyer’s journey. McKinsey’s CHOICES framework of behavioral drivers highlights: Context, Habit, Other People, Incentives, Congruence, Emotions, and Salience.
Also, several studies show the impact of the Myers-Brigs approach, which was really popular in the 70s and 80s. It examines traits of introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving. While the model is comprehensive, it’s not robust or sustainable enough to carry out experiments with.
The Big Five Personality Model
Popular today and more feasible for research on modern customer psychology is the Big Five Personality Test. It is summarized in the acronym CANOE or OCEAN:
Conscientiousness
Common characteristics of this dimension include high levels of thoughtfulness, impulse control, and goal-oriented behaviors. These buyers tend to be organized and mindful of details and with an acute sense of responsibility, integrity, and ethical manner. Buyers with a big score here tend to pre-plan and make more mindful purchase decisions. Think of the conscious consumer who’s interested in sustainable living. They like to feel empowered and informed before the next purchase.
Agreeableness
Features of this personality dimension include trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other pro-social behaviors. They tend to be approachable in nature with a willingness to give and receive support. They’re likely to be the first ones to welcome you with open arms if they care about your brand’s ‘why’.
Neuroticism
This personality dimension measures the ability to adjust and balance emotions appropriately in an independent and self-confident manner. It gauges emotional stability. Individuals who score high on this trait tend to experience anxiety, moodiness, irritability and mood swings, and the like. Which is not necessarily a negative thing. Research shows that stress is among the primary drivers for decision making and several other behaviors.
Openness
This trait features characteristics such as imagination, unconventional, and intellectual curiosity. Buyers who score high in this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests and are willing to experiment with a varied palette of products.
Extrovertedness
This trait includes features like excitability and sociability. They tend to be emotionally expressive and assertive. These are great if you’re planning on turning your consumers into evangelists for your brand.
The Big Five in action
The is a strong connection between data and psychology. It exists in politics, marketing, human resource management, advertising, and it will stay for a very long time. This nexus helps segment and quantify your audiences by getting to the mindset of people. The fabric of the psyche runs deeper than demographics or geographics. And psychography is essentially an understanding of what makes up your personality and how that influences your behavior. Moreover, combined with demographic and other niche targeting factors, it might just be the next big thing in your market research.
Proceed, but with caution
While some regard psychographics as ‘the dark arts’, it’s not all jinxed. Alexander Nicks from Cambridge University confirms that its method is precise, scalable, and scientific. And yet, it must be applied with caution:
- Personality traits do not account for cross-cultural, demographic, or geographic differences in behavior.
- The CANOE framework is a simplified version of a vast and complex topic. In fact, when the researchers began the study they started with multiple factor analysis traits and verbal descriptions. These were brought down five or tenfold to make them more observable.
- And finally, humans have always tried to study personality and the assessment methods keep changing.
At the same time, if you’re headed to build a new product or stack up some services for your customers, there is no one-size-fits-all for it. Or for anything else for that matter. A deeper examination of your audiences is a breeding ground for inspiration and innovation. Besides, in a COVID-battered world nuanced study of audiences is going to bring fresh perspectives into market research.
From the department of cool planning
Here are some non-gimmicky tips on how to go about personality studies and customer persona segmentation.
First off, you start with quantifying your audience personas, whoever they are. They are likely to be aligned with your vision regardless of whether they’re neurotic ambiverts who care about being late to the party or not.
Second, you map out a list of potential biases that may hinder your goals in the customer’s journey. When you make allowances for biases it’s like water under the bridge even if there’s a slip-up.
And finally, you run the good ole’ CANOE test before treading upon the waters. As behavioral scientist Daniel Ariely put it, humans are ‘predictably irrational’. To understand what moves our audiences at scale, we need to first start with engagement, on their terms. Also, this is going to be a trend in every market. Because there is an unquestionable need to be more human and empathetic with the customer. And the Big Five just happens to quantify some core underlying traits that are directly affect buying behavior. CANOE see it?
