How Personality Traits Predict Design-Driven Consumer Choices

Abstract

To further understand why a consumer’s choices are influenced by the aesthetic value of products (Hollins & Pugh, 1990; Bloch, 1995; Schmitt & Simonson, 1997), individual differences in design-driven consumer choices must be investigated. Previous empirical work suggests that the extent to which one pays attention and is responsive to the aesthetic value of products (Bloch, Brunel, & Arnold, 2003) and Openness to experience (Sharpe & Ramanaiah, 1999) are both linked with materialism. This study aims to provide new elements to understand why consumers choose and value well-designed products, using the framework of the Big Five model of personality (John & Srivastava, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 1999), focusing more particularly on Openness to experience. 158 adult participants completed the Centrality of Visual Product Aesthetics questionnaire (CVPA; Bloch, Brunel, & Arnold, 2003), along with the Big Five Inventory (BFI; John, 1990; John & Srivastava, 1999). As hypothesized, personality significantly predicted the individuals’ tendency to prefer products with a superior design. More specifically, every subscale of the CVPA was significantly negatively correlated with Openness to experience. Implications, limitations and potential uses of these results in marketing are discussed.