Segmenting consumers according to experiential preferences based on personality type vs. personality traits – a latent class analysis

Differences in consumers’ preferences for experiences have been suggested to be based on personality among other things. Personality in consumer research has primarily been operationalized as personality traits using the Five Factor theory. An old, re-emerged discussion in psychology is pointing at personality type rather than single personality traits to better understand behavior. Personality type represents “typical configurations of the dispositional attributes that define individuals” (Donnellan and Robins, 2010: 1). Type accounts for the necessity of understanding not only a person’s defining trait but also how this interacts with other traits providing a person centered rather than an attribute centered understanding. This allows for a classification of people rather than a classification of attributes of people. In the context of segmentation the objective is classifying people rather than attributes of people, therefore the line of thinking is found intriguing and will be explored further in a consumer experience setting.