Neural Bases for Segmentation and Positioning
Why in the same situations different consumers do not act similarly? And if they behave differently, then they should feel and reason differently as well. One of the most salient features of emotion is the pronounced variability among individuals in their
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Neural Bases for Segmentation and Positioning
4.1
Personality Traits and Implications for Consumer Behavior
Why in the same situations different consumers do not act similarly? And if they behave differently, then they should feel and reason differently as well. One of the most salient features of emotion is the pronounced variability among individuals in their reactions to emotional incentives and in their dispositional mood. Collectively, these individual differences have been described as the affective style (Davidson 2004). At issue, however, are not just the emotional reactions but the emotional memory and perception as well. Individual differences in the form of experience, perception, and attention impact the nature of information recorded in associative memories and lead to different perspectives on a person’s inner and outer world. Psychiatrists used to link personality to character pathology. For the sake of marketing studies, it is about the time to view personality as just a manifestation of an individual’s traits of behavior without necessarily passing normative judgments. A good starting point is to draw on the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) formulated by Jeffrey Gray. Accordingly, the neural architecture of the Behavioral Approach System (BAS) (Corr and Perkins 2006) differs from that of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) – people use different mechanisms in addressing the quality of life-enhancing opportunity in contrast to the preoccupation with the preservation of the status quo. We can speculate that the degree to which approach/avoidance dominates behavior is determined by individual propensities. In addition, the Fight-flight-freeze system (FFFS) is involved in reactions to all aversive stimuli and accounts for fear-proneness. Behavioral Approach System (BAS) responds to appetitive stimuli and is in charge of the emotion of the “anticipatory pleasure”. Specifically, this system is believed to stimulate such personality traits as: optimism, reward-orientation and extraversion. BAS – “rich” individuals are more responsive to reward-cues (Avila and Parcet 2002; Barros-Loscertales et al. 2006). As noted by Carver (2005), high BAS sensitivity should cause people to seek new incentives, to be persistent in
L. Zurawicki, Neuromarketing, DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-77829-5_4, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010
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4 Neural Bases for Segmentation and Positioning
pursuing incentives, and to respond with stronger positive feelings when goals are attained. One can look at BAS as a “seeking system” (Panksepp 2004) or as a stimulator of desires. In turn, BIS is involved in the resolution of the goal conflicts. It generates the “watch out for danger” emotion of anxiety, engages the risk assessment processes and the scanning of memory and the environment. BIS acts by increasing the negative valence of the stimuli until the approach or avoidance type of resolution is determined. A strong BIS corresponds with the worry-proneness. In what is relevant to actions by consumers, BIS was hypot
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