personal projects (Little 1989), and life tasks (Cantor 1990). The third.
level, life stories, deals with the narratives that people construct to.
integrate their remembered past, experienced present, and anticipated future.
into a coherent whole and to develop an identity that provides meaning and.
purpose to their lives.
Personality Traits: The Dispositional Consumer.
After the crisis caused by Mischel's (1968) incisive critique of trait.
approaches, the field was reenergized in the early 1980s by the emergence of.
the five-factor taxonomy of personality traits, which proposes that five.
dimensions are necessary and sufficient to represent human personality in.
terms of traits. Arranged in order of magnitude of variance accounted for in.
personality ratings, the five dimensions are (1) extraversion, energy, or.
enthusiasm; (2) agreeableness, altruism, or affection; (3) conscientiousness,.
control, or constraint; (4) neuroticism, negative affectivity, or nervousness;.
and (5) openness to experience, originality, or open-mindedness (John and.
Srivastava 1999).
Although the Big Five taxonomy has not been universally accepted, there is.
general agreement that it serves as a useful integrative framework for.
thinking about individual differences at a fairly high level of abstraction.
Somewhat surprisingly, work on the Big Five in psychology--and, in a more.
general sense, the underlying concern with structuring trait psychology--has.
so far had little impact on consumer research. One reason for this might be.
that, in order to strengthen the relationship between personality and aspects.
of consumer behavior, consumer researchers have been admonished to "develop.
their own definitions and design their own instruments to measure the.
personality variables that go into the purchase decision" (Kassarjian and.
Sheffet 1981, p. 169). While predictive accuracy may be improved by.
considering domain-specific individual difference variables, the proliferation.
