The Personality Continuum and Consumer Behavior

by Paul J. Albanese

Overview

Why do consumers behave as they do? Why do some make consistent, predictable, and rational choices among competing products while others demonstrate inconsistent, unpredictable, and irrational purchasing patterns? Why do some people and not others become compulsive shoppers? The answers lie in the individual's personality organization. Albanese has formulated an operational approach to the organization of the personality of an individual from psychoanalytic object relations theory combined with an interpersonal theory of the personality.

He relates this to the neoclassical theory of the consumer. The results are encapsulated in the Personality Continuum, an integrative framework drawing on the disciplines of economics, sociology, psychology, and anthropology. This multidisciplinary conceptual construct does not exclude any approach to the study of consumer behavior, and will therefore be of interest to scholars and practitioners in all of these fields, as well as in marketing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781567205589
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/30/2002
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

PAUL J. ALBANESE is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Kent State University. An economist by training, he has spent the past 20 years researching personality and consumer behavior.

Table of Contents

Preface
Inside Economic Man
Introduction
Personality In Behavioral Economics, Marketing, Trait Theory in Psychology, and Organizational Behavior
Shrinking Economic Man
Individual Pursuit of Self Interest and the Social Basis of Individual Behavior
The Historical Misinterpretation of Adam Smith's Exquisite View of Human Nature
Object Relations Theory of Personality
Superego and the Origins of Object Relations Theory
The Crossroads
Normal Personality Development
The Normal Consumer: Rational Economic Man, Mutatis Mutandis
The Basic Fault: Failure to Achieve the Integration of Whole Object Relations
Comparative Analysis of Personality Organizations
W. R. D. Fairbairn, The Schizoid Personality Organization, and British Object Relations Theory
Otto F. Kernberg, The Borderline Personality Organization, and American Object Relations Theory
Portrait of the Narcissistic Personality Organizations
An Expanded Comparative Analysis of Personality Organizations
Toward a Human Understanding of Consumer Behavior
The Dark Side of Consumer Behavior
Expanded Economic Analysis of Consumer Behavior
Relentless Individual Pursuit of Self Interest in America
Epilogue
References
Index