Consumer Traits and How Consumers Interact – Targeting the Right Channel

Did you know that your consumers can be categorised into 8 different categories based on their stable personality traits?

These consumer traits include being Conservative/Open, Active/Passive and Social/Instrumental. Based on these traits, consumers can be bucketed into categories such as:

1. Conservative – Passive – Social
2. Conservative – Passive – Instrumental
3. Conservative – Active – Social
4. Conservative – Active – Instrumental
5. Open – Passive – Social
6. Open – Passive – Instrumental
7. Open – Active – Social
8. Open – Active – Instrumental

Conservative consumers are often focused on security and familiar forms and frameworks. Open
customers, on the other hand, are eager to experiment with new things. They have more knowledge
of media, relatively speaking.

Passive customers have a strong tendency to focus on judgements cast upon them by others. They believe in social acceptance. Active consumers are trendsetters and have a need for control. They prefer to follow their own lead and ignore ‘True’ advice from others.

Instrumentals are consumers that are more results driven and are often individually oriented. They derive security from more ‘Objective Aspects’. Socials, on the other hand, prefer face-to-face contact over the phone and certainly prefer using the internet. They believe in getting a ‘Good Feeling’ from things around them.

The entire consumer journey can be divided into 6 phases which provides avenues of customer-brand interactions. These phases are categorised as:

Phase 1 – Observation
Phase 2 – General Information
Phase 3 – Targeted Information Processing
Phase 4 – Choice of Supplier or Brand
Phase 5 – Transaction
Phase 6 – After the Sales Period

(Source: Peelen et al – 2000)

The image above outlines the channels utilised by each of the customer types at each stage of the customer journey.

Each of these channels provides an opportunity for the brand to create a differentiating factor. The brand can create an amazing experience for the customers and convert them to brand evangelists and increase brand loyalty. Considering the traits and the types of customers, brands can deploy conditional conversation mechanisms that appeal to the right customer set and trigger conversations that are engaging and insightful.