Personality of Chinese Consumers

In my last article on Personality Traits and Brand Choices, I have touched on the history and development of the Big 5 model of trait personality theory. This is, by far, the most empirically researched and evident-backed approach of measuring our psychological dispositions. And because of the measurements are being done at the trait level, results are stable over time unless major events take place that alter our views in general, that would perhaps mean the loss of a spouse, a major accident or disaster, or becoming a parent etc.

If we take a look at personality at a collective level, we can measure users of certain brands, owners of different car brands, people from the entire province/state, or even the entire nation! It's not that such investigation has not been done before, but mainly by academics usually using students as their convenient samples who are likely to have shared many similar life experiences, or more homogeneous because of them being in more or less the same life stage. In other words, it is the representativeness of samples.

But why do we want to know the personality of the entire nation? It's FUN of course! And if we have done this across different countries, the knowledge will be valuable for marketers pushing their products or services internationally. Why? Because traits are people's dispositions towards stimuli. Imagine this: if a nation of consumers is found to be high on Agreeableness and Emotional Stability (or sometimes known as low on Neuroticism), a communication style of being provocative and offensive could backfire, distancing the brand or product from the majority of consumers in that market.

Personality of Chinese Consumers

Our data from a total of n=3,000 samples aged 20 to 49 collected from 10 different cities around China show that the average scores using 5-point scales on the five key traits are:

Conscientiousness: 3.74

Agreeableness: 3.58

Extraversion: 2.90

Openness to experience: 3.36

Emotional Stability: 3.34

Which means, Chinese on average are more conscientious, agreeable, open to experience, emotionally stable, and more introverted.

Previous studies amongst Chinese from 2013 and 2015 using different measurement scales seem to also reflect similar patterns. This is true even when compared to a 2010 study in the UK amongst n=1,481 university students from England and Wales using the exact same measurement tool. Chinese are definitely more introverted and more emotionally stable, as well as more conscientious. However, they may seem to be a little on the less open side when it comes to new experience, and not as agreeable in comparison. A more recent 2017 study of 12 markets with n=2,363 Chinese samples using the longer version of the measurement we employed also revealed a similar pattern of strong emotional stability and conscientiousness in comparison to the other 11 markets in Asia and Western Europe.

This profile fits the general stereotypical image of a typical Chinese at the collective level. Brands targeting Chinese consumers, in general, may like to tune up their conscientiousness and appear less controversial in their tone and manner. But wait! Does it mean that all other types of messages will be unlikely to achieve resonance? Not really. Just by simply looking at the descriptive statistics in terms of their standard deviations, we found that variations are strong and obvious on the Emotional stability as well as the Conscientiousness and the introvert/extrovert dimensions. That is to say, consumers do differ more on these three aspects, where differentiations can be played out.

There are also city-tier and regional differences. Tier-1 consumers are more open to experience, more extroverted, and more conscientious. And Northerners are more agreeable and conscientious than their Southern counterparts.

And if we look at demographic differences, we will find that the older they are, the more conscientious they showed, and the difference starts from 30 years old onwards. This would mean if we dial up the image on conscientiousness when communicating, we are more likely to appeal to those above 30 years old. And those who earn more than RMB 8,000, as well as those who are married with kids, score higher on all 5 dimensions, an indication of a clearer disposition on all aspect.

This is going to be generalizing, but it's fun to know that:

If you are a 40-49 years old father or mother living in a Tier-1 city from the Northern part of China, earning RMB 8,000 or more per month, you would likely be amongst the most conscientious person in China, maybe even in Asia if not globally (but remember: individual differences do exist).

Now you are probably forming a mental picture of who this person is, and perhaps even trying to visualize their living environment, the things they own, or even how they dress like. We, humans, are interesting creatures that we will automatically develop associations based on our own mental framework or schema. Because of that, we also wonder if there is clear personality match of consumers and brands they use as I have pointed out in the last article.

As a result, we have developed our own Brand Personality Optimizer - personWA, a tool that helps brand managers achieve an objective measure of their brand personality performance, personality clarity as well as key personality trait dominances. And with that, we have tested the model on matching consumers of frozen-food, chocolates, sports brands, and luxury automotive brands. People do seem to be different, the more differentiated the brand personalities are, the more differentiated their consumer personalities reflect.

More about that in my next post where I will be sharing some snippets of how brands and their users perform in different categories.

For the Technically inclined, here comes the methodology

WisdomAsia (WA) runs a monthly n=1,000 online Omnibus in China called WisdomBUS.

The sampling approach is rooted in the Heihe-Tengchong Line of China which cuts China diagonally with a straight line drawn from the Northern border city of Heihe to the Southern border city of Tengchong. The East side of the line represents 43% of the area but 94% of the population in China as of 2015. We used socioeconomic data to classify 1st- and 2nd-tier cities to perform stratified sampling of 10 cities. Online respondents from these 10 cities then formed our samples. In other words, results represent the majority of 1st- and 2nd-tier cities' Chinese consumers. And I have combined three months of data to arrive at the current personality profile of Chinese consumers.

As for the measurement used, I have decided to stick to the Five-Factor-Model which has a long history of being employed in serious psychological testings and established relationships with various behaviors as well as other psychological traits. Dr. Lewis Goldberg's constructs were used as the measurement tool. These psychometric constructs have been tested empirically in various countries for their validity and reliability, and have a high correlation with the commercially available and widely used NEO-PI by Dr. Paul Costa and Dr. Robert McCrae or the BFI by John & Srivastava. Sticking straightly to the tradition of scientific investigation, the constructs had been put into test via Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) resulting in the same 5 factors a priori (not using PCA but PAF with oblique rotation) as well as Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) using AMOS to ascertain the validity of the model.

For those who want to learn more, here are a few references on the topic of personalities:

Cooper, A. J., Smillie, L. D., & Corr, P. J. (2010). A confirmatory factor analysis of the Mini-IPIP five-factor model personality scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 48(5), 688-691. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.01.004

Kajonius, P. J. (2017). Cross-cultural personality differences between East Asia and Northern Europe in IPIP-NEO. International Journal of Personality Psychology, 3(1), 1-7.

Li, Q., & Chen, Z. (2015). Age differences in personality traits from 15 to 75: Big five domains and 10 facets in a large cross-sectional sample in Chinese. Journal of Psychological Science, 38(1), 131-138.

Zhai, Q., Willis, M., O'Shea, B., Zhai, Y., & Yang, Y. (2013). Big five personality traits, job satisfaction and subjective wellbeing in China. International Journal of Psychology, 48(6), 1099-1108. doi:10.1080/00207594.2012.732700