Consumer Behavior Chapter 6

LO1: Self-concept

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Decorating the self can serve several purposes. Some of these are to:

1) Distinguish group members from nonmembers 2) Place the individual in the social organization 3) Place the person in a gender category 4) Enhance sex-role identification 5) Indicate desired social conduct 6) Indicate high status or rank 7)Provide a sense of security

What are the three traditional models of masculinity?

1) breadwinner: American view of success 2) rebel: rebellion, independence, adventure, potency 3) man of action: draws from the better of the other two models

Social identity as individual consumption behaviors Question: who am i now? Answer: ?

Answer: to some extent, your possessions People use an individual's consumption behaviors to identify that person's social identity. In addition to looking at clothes and grooming habits, we make inferences about personality based on choices of leisure activities, food preferences, and home decorating choices.

We describe attributes of self-concept along dimensions such as ?

Content - facial attractiveness versus mental aptitude Positivity - self-esteem Intensity and stability over time Accuracy - degree to which one's self-assessment corresponds to reality

Empty self

Decline of shared points (over the last 50 years) of references form decline in family, community, and traditons

Gender Identity is an important component of what?

Gender Identity is an important component of a consumer's self concept

Products can help us do what do what two things?

Help us reach ideal self Be consistent with actual self

The levels of the extended self?

Individual: personal possessions (cars, clothing) Family: Residence and furnishings Community: neighborhood or town where you live Group: Social or other groups

Many societies still expect traditional roles: Agentic roles: Communal roles:

Many societies expect males to pursue agentic goals, which stress self-assertion and mastery. However, they teach females to value communal goals, such as affiliation and building harmonious relations.

Define Ideal self

Our conception of how we would like to be

Define Actual self

Our more realistic appraisal of the qualities we have

Products often define what?

Products often define a person's self concept

Consumers demonstrate their values through their ?

Purchase behavior

Define self-concept

Self-concept summarizes the beliefs a person holds about his own attributes and how he evaluates the self on those qualities

Looking-glass self

The process of imagining other's reactions We take readings of our own identity when we "bounce" signals off others and try to project their impression of us Self-fulfilling prophecy comes into play here

Learning objectives of this chapter The self-concept strongly influences what?

The self-concept strongly influences consumer behavior

Many products are sex-typed meaning?

They take on masculine or feminine attributes and consumers associate them with one gender or another

A person's physical image is a large part of his or her self-concept T/F

True

Men and women received mixed messages about how they are supposed to behave and feel T/F

True

We choose some products because we think they are consistent with our _____ while we buy others to help us reach an ____ ________ We may strategically choose clothing and other products to show off to others. In other words, we are managing their impression of us with our product choices.

We choose some products because we think they are consistent with our actual self while we buy others to help us reach an ideal standard

Example of self-control/self-esteem

When it developed a new line of snack cakes, Sara Lee found that consumers low in self-esteem preferred portion-controlled snack items because they felt they lacked self-control. In contrast, a more recent study found that individuals who are made to feel powerful spend more money on themselves ("because I'm worth it!"), whereas those who experience a feeling of powerlessness spend more on others than on themselves.

body image distortions

Women in particular tend to pick up messages from the media that the quality of their bodies reflects their self-worth, so it is not surprising that most (though certainly not all) major body image distortions occur among females. These psychological disorders cause the patient to believe that his or her body literally is bigger or smaller than others see it.

Body image refers to

a consumer's subjective evaluation of his physical self not very accurate

Body cathexis refers to

a person's feeling about his body

Define identity

any category label with which a consumer self-associates with Identity is any category label with which a consumer self-associates that is amenable to a clear picture of what a person in that category looks like, thinks, feels and does.

Social Comparison is an evaluation of ?

appearance by comparing it to other people depicted in sometimes artificial images

Although your overall self-concept may be positive, there are certainly what?

are parts of it that you evaluate more positively than others

Every culture dictates certain types of what?

body decoration and mutilation

Sex-typed traits

characteristics we stereotypically associate with one gender or the other.

The self concept is a very ____ _______

complex structure

identity marketing is a promotional strategy where?

consumers alter some aspects of their selves to advertise for a branded product For instance, Air New Zealand created "cranial billboards" in exchange for a round-trip ticket to New Zealand. 30 participants shaved their heads and walked around with an ad for the airline on their skulls. The Casa Sanchez restaurant in San Francisco gives free lunches for life to anyone who gets its logo tattooed on their body.

gender roles do vary by culture and they shift as?

culture shifts

Fattism

deeply ingrained in our culture As early as nursery school age, children prefer drawings of peers in wheelchairs, on crutches, or with facial disfigurements to those of fat children. Society is obsessed with weight. Though it began as America's obsession, the cultural priority on thinness is spreading to other countries. Still, even with the ideal of thin, the U.S. consumer today is larger than 60 years ago. The typical woman's body is not as petite as it used to be.

Meerkating

describes the act of someone shooting a live video stream, has become a verb as thousands of people create their own running self-documentaries.

Marketers pitch products that are needed to what?

facilitate active role identities We all have multiple roles we play in our lives. We may have as many selves as we do different social roles.

People often conform to their culture's expectations about how ?

how those of their gender should act, dress, or speak, and we refer to these as SEX ROLES

Self monitors

how we present ourselves in social environment and how we think others perceive our product choices (high self monitors are more attuned to this)

The way we think about our bodies (and the way our culture tells us we should think)

is a key component of self-esteem

Many of our gender roles are socialized by?

marketing

according to the glass-self view, our desire to define ourselves operates as what?

operates as sort of a psychological sonar

The external objects that we consider part of us make up what?

our extended self many material objects can help to form a person's identity

Symbolic self-completion theory

people complete their identity by acquisition Symbolic self-completion theory suggests that people who have an incomplete self-definition tend to complete this identity when they acquire and display symbols they associate with that role.

The digital self is when

people construct digital versions of their selves online by using digital footprints, lifestreams, and profiles People also use wearable computing to increase the digital self

The reflected self helps shape self-concept, which implies that ?

people see themselves as they imagine others see them Because what others see includes a person's clothing, jewelry, furniture, car, and so on, it stands to reason that these products also help to create the perceived self.

Virtually every culture has a beauty bias

preferences for some genetic features are genetic rather than cultural (large eyes, high cheekbones, and a narrow jaw)

Power posing:

standing in a confident way even if you don't feel confident, which affects brain activity

Virtual makeovers are platforms that allow the shopper to what?

superimpose images on their faces or bodies so that they can quickly and easily see how products would alter their appearances without taking the risk of actually buying the item first

Symbolic interactionism stresses that what?

that relationships with other people play a large part in forming the self

People with low self esteem expect that what?

that they will not perform very will, and they will try to avoid embarrassment, failure, and rejection.

The word cathexis refers to ?

the emotional significance of some object or idea

public self-consciousness

the extent in which a person expresses interest in clothing and the use of cosmetics

Self-esteem refers to what?

the positivity of a person's self-concept

Embodied cognition relates to what?

the state of the body modifying states of mind ex) power posing

Enclothed cognitions shows how what?

the symbolic meaning of clothing changes how people behave

Impression management means that work to what?

to "manage" what others think of us (think of products you buy or social media posts)

When we use objects to maintain our self-concept, we tend to what?

to become attached to those objects The more the person relies upon the possession as a way of defining and supporting his or her identity, the more attached the person will be to the possession.

Dramaturgical perspective definition

views people as actors who play different roles

Self-image congruence models shows that

we choose products when attributes matches the self product usage = self-image

Vanity sizing

when manufacturers deliberately assign smaller sizes to garments.

Define collective self

where a person derives his or her identity in large measure from a social group

Torn self definition

where respondents struggle with retaining an authentic culture while still enjoying Western freedom

our appraisal of who we are varies depending on?

whose perspective we consider and how accurately we predict their evaluations of us