![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/TV4.jpg\" "\\"advertising\\"")
Advertisers spend enormous amounts of time and money attempting to tailor their advertising campaigns to the needs of different demographic groups. After all, the concerns of first-year college students are going to be different from those of retired professionals.<\/p>\n
Even within a given demographic category, however, there are many individual differences, such as personality, that shape consumer behavior<\/strong>. A new study in Psychological Science<\/em>, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that advertisements can be more effective when they are tailored to the unique personality profiles of potential consumers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile persuasive messages are often targeted toward specific demographic groups,\u201d says study author Jacob Hirsh, from the University of Toronto\u2019s Rotman School of Management, \u201cwe wanted to see whether their effectiveness could be improved by targeting personality characteristics that cut across demographic categories.\u201d<\/p>\n Hirsh and his co-authors Sonia Kang, also from the Rotman School of Management and the University of Toronto Mississauga, and Galen Bodenhausen, from Northwestern University\u2019s Kellogg School of Management, recruited 324 individuals. They constructed five advertisements for a cell phone, each designed to target one of the five major trait domains of human personality<\/strong>: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness to Experience<\/strong>. Each of these personality dimensions is associated with a unique motivational concern. For example, Agreeable individuals tend to value a sense of belonging, compassion, and interpersonal harmony, while Open individuals tend to value intellectual and aesthetic pursuits.<\/p>\n The advertisements featured a picture of the phone next to a paragraph of text that was changed in order to highlight the motivational concerns associated with each of the five personality dimensions. For example, the advertisement tailored to extraverts included the line \u201cWith XPhone, you\u2019ll always be where the excitement is\u201d, whereas for neurotics, the same line read, \u201cStay safe and secure with the XPhone.\u201d<\/p>\n Participants were asked to rate the effectiveness of the ads with questions like, \u201cI find this advertisement to be persuasive\u201d; \u201cthis is an effective advertisement\u201d; and \u201cI would purchase this product after seeing this advertisement.\u201d Participants were also asked to describe their own characteristics on a personality questionnaire. In every case, the advertisements were rated as more effective when they were aligned to match the participant\u2019s personality profile<\/strong>. Messages that compelled an extravert to buy the phone, for example, were very different from those that appealed to conscientious individuals.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were impressed by the range of motives that can be brought to bear on a single object,\u201d Hirsh says. \u201cAlthough the product itself was the same in each case, its subjective value changed dramatically depending on the personal motives we highlighted in the advertisement.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2012, nearly $530 billion will be spent on advertising around the world. Whether promoting political candidates, consumer products, or sound health and investment behavior, these persuasive communications constitute a significant component of the global economy. \u00a0As Hirsh points out, \u201cThis research has broad implications for the development of tailored communication strategies across industries. Personality-based message design may be useful not only for advertisers, but also for fostering any number of outcomes, from health promotion, to civic engagement, to environmental responsibility.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release: Advertisers spend enormous amounts of time and money attempting to tailor their advertising campaigns to the needs of different demographic groups. After… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[153,96,364,37,32,12,156,218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3090"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3092,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3090\/revisions\/3092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}