Lay, Cui Ling; (2021) The Role of Self-congruity in Consumer Preferences: Perspectives from Transaction Records. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Personalised marketing is more persuasive than traditional techniques aimed at the masses, however marketers do not always have access to consumers’ private attributes in order to apply these insights. The effect of personalisation is based on an established theory in consumer psychology – self-congruity theory – which posits that individuals prefer products, brands and advertisements that embody characteristics that match with their self-concepts. Self-congruence not only enhances marketing effectiveness, it can also be used to improve consumer well-being. While it has been established that consumers who spend in a way that is more congruent with their personality are happier, clarifications around the types of individuals who are more or less likely to engage in self-congruent spending, as well as the moderating effects on the benefit in happiness from such consumption could inform policy for improving happiness at a collective level. This thesis contributes to a growing body of research which attempts to understand how consumption patterns are related to consumers’ characteristics, its applications in advertising, as well as consumer well-being. By using a dataset containing more than 1 million transactions recorded over a period of 12-months, the thesis demonstrates the value of the digital footprint in the form of bank transactions for enriching our understanding of key questions in consumer research, underpinned by the theory of self-congruity. This thesis combines methods from computational social science with personality psychology to test research questions on consumer preferences. Two components of the thesis focused on the predictive utility of transaction records in inferring consumer attributes with which to personalise advertising, as well as the use of transaction records in examining self-congruence in overall consumption patterns and its relationship with happiness. Through five empirical studies, this work suggests that consumer attributes such as age and financial distress can be reliably inferred from consumption patterns reflected in transaction records (Chapter 3 and 5). The inferred age can be used to personalise advertisements in order to increase their appeal (Chapter 4). Using an objective measure of self-congruence in overall consumption pattern computed from transaction records and panel ratings, the thesis shows that individuals differ in their tendency to spend in a way that is congruent with their personality based on their levels of materialism and financial distress (Chapter 6). As the most important predictor of self-congruent spending, financial distress moderates the relationship between self-congruent spending and happiness (Chapter 7). These findings contribute insights into how consumption patterns are related to consumer attributes and usefulness for personalisation in marketing, as well as policy recommendations for improving well-being by targeting consumption patterns in financially distressed individuals. In addition, this thesis also showcases the value of machine learning and large-scale behavioural field data in the study of consumer psychology. Privacy and ethical concerns surrounding automated profiling and microtargeting are also cautioned.

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