How Personality Traits Predict Design-Driven Consumer Choices

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. peerReviewed publishedVersion