How Identity Impacts Consumer Behavior

Learn how identity affects consumer behavior and how it can be used by marketers to target potential customers. Understand how gender identity plays a role in consumer behavior and how it can be used by brands.

How Identity Impacts Consumer Behavior

People with a more independent self-interpretation tend to avoid products linked to identity when that identity is threatened, while those with a more interdependent self-interpretation show more positive preferences for such products. Along with social proof, there is another area of psychology that greatly influences social identity: consumers take pride in the things they're affiliated with (sports teams, universities, etc.). The relationship between people's personalities and their buying behavior is still being studied. For example, some studies have shown that those who seek sensations or show high levels of candor are more likely to respond well to violent and graphic advertising.

Marketers have had better luck linking people's self-concept to their buying behavior. Your self-concept is how you see yourself, whether positive or negative. Your ideal self is how you would like to see yourself, whether muscular, more popular, more environmentally conscious, or more conservative. Every consumer and potential purchaser has a social identity that affects how they see themselves and, as a result, their response to services and products.

The main aspect of social identity theory is that group members will seek to find negative aspects of an external group. Therefore, people with strong group identities tend to stay in their group and to indicate that they belong to the group with identity-related activities. Few studies take into account the strength of gender identity, which may indicate chronic identity prominence and is an important component of the self-categorization approach to gender. Some sellers may target consumers with low self-esteem and use messages about their products or services that promise the benefits of high self-esteem.

You can also emphasize the relevance of the brand through social identities by making the necessary changes to your image to make your customers feel more included (without altering the authenticity of your brand). The strong gender identity of men leads to the process of gender dichotomization, a tendency to distance male traits from female traits, which could indicate that they would want to indicate their gender in the market in more traditionally masculine ways. We present two approaches to gender identity in psychology and connect them to a broader classification of identity. Signs of situational prominence include symbols related to inside or outside the group, while chronic prominence is usually influenced by the force of identification, which reinforces the association between the self and a particular identity.

Terri Benigno
Terri Benigno

Passionate pizza aficionado. Subtly charming travel fanatic. Proud coffee junkie. Certified twitter geek. Typical music fanatic. Freelance bacon specialist.

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