E-Marketing Professionals

Psychological/Life-Style Characteristics
Another type of primary data of interest to marketers is the subject's psychological and life-style characteristics in the form of personality traits, activities, interests, and values. Personality refers to the normal patterns of behavior exhibited by an individual. It represents the attributes, traits, and mannerisms that distinguish one individual from another. We often characterize people by the personality traits—aggressiveness, dominance, friendliness, sociability—they display. Marketers are interested in personality because the traits people possess would seem to be important in affecting the way consumers and others in the marketing process behave. The argument is often advanced, for example, that personality can affect a consumer's choice of stores or products or an individual's response to an advertisement or point-of-purchase display

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Similarly, it is believed that certain characteristics like extroversion or empathy are more likely to be possessed by successful than by unsuccessful salespeople. While the empirical evidence regarding the ability of personality to predict consumption behavior or salesperson success is weak, personality remains a variable dear to the hearts of marketing researchers. Personality is typically measured by one of the standard personality inventories that have been developed by psychologists.