Women’s personality and decision making style

Abstract

It’s beneficial to define brands’ target groups based on psychological variables, in particular personality, since personality is thought to predict buying behavior. To be able to design marketing communication strategies and other marketing activities to fit the target audience, it is important to gain knowledge on how they make decisions regarding what to buy, but the decision making style may differ depending on products or services. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relation between women’s personality traits and their buying decision making style when it comes to cosmetics. In line with previous studies, personality was divided into five traits; extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness and buying decision making style into four types; brand and store loyalty, spontaineity, price-value consciousness, and variety-seeking. Answers were collected from 1700 women regarding their personality and buying decision making style. The results show that personality predicts buying decision making style when it comes to cosmetics, but the strongest explanatory power was on spontaineity. Women who rank high on extraversion are likely to be loyal to specific brands and stores, but they also tend to be spontaneous when buying cosmetics. However, women who rank high on agreeableness or conscientiousness are unlikely to be spontaneous in the buying decisions, while those that rank high on neuroticism are likely to show spontaineity when it comes to cosmetics. Women high on openness appreciate variety, are price-value consciousness, but they also tend to be loyal to specific brands and stores. Cosmetics companies can gain valuable information from the findings of the study since it offers good insight into the relation between specific personality traits and various buying decision making styles.