The 4th - Personality and Self-concept

Dr. Joyce Brothers, a famous psychologist once said:
“An individual's self-concept is the core of his personality". (Dr. Joyce Brothers 1960)
Self concept simply means what one person thinks of themselves. For example a young person would think differently of themselves then a older person, this would be because of age but there may be many reasons why a person thinks in a certain way about themselves. The main ones I think could be:

Age and Gender

Culture

Background

Income

Lifestyle

These would be the main ways in which a persons self image is constructed. Age is an obvious reason why some people think of themselves in certain ways. My grandad always says to me, 'Im old so I cannot walk to your house everyday, even though he is there every week! But this is the self image he has of himself. Looking at what a young person would think of themselves, my younger cousin is a prime example. Many times he says to me he can drive a bus, just because his father is a bus driver! Trust me he can't! This is just the concept in which he thinks and this should change with age. (Hopefully!) One way in which marketers and product developers can take advantage of this is through targeting young children with small cars, I mean toy cars not Minis! This would be taking full advantage of this market because many children would make their parents buy these.

Some peoples self concept is negative and some people's positive, a person who has a negative self concept will spend more on cosmetics and jewellery. A person who has a positive self image will most likely in my opinion spend more money on cars, their house and things like that.

Marketers can use this to their advantage, like the boots 'here come the girls' advert is for girls who think they have to wear make up to look good. This advert will target these sort of people. So self concept is very important in the way marketers plan their adverts, generally, people of a certain age and gender will have a certain image of themselves. For example, males around the age of 40 will say they are lazy, this is in general. Advertisers will have to meet this by designing ads which will fit the self image of certain people:

Take a look at this ad designed to get people out of their chairs and get active.

This ad, I think will be very good in influencing people to get out of their chairs and actully do something active. It fits the profile of males and it fits their self concept. If you have any questions about self-concept contact the lady in the above picture.