Buyer Behaviour - Personality

Personality Types and Styles

 Understanding Personality Types helps us to understand the most effective way to communicate with others. 

The theory of Personality Types suggests that people have a personality preference, and that our “Personality Type” indicates how we are most likely to deal with different situations that life presents, and in which environments we are most comfortable.

The theory today is that every individual has a primary mode of operation within four categories:

• our flow of energy
• how we take in information
• how we prefer to make decisions
• the basic day-to-day lifestyle that we prefer

Within each of these categories, we "prefer" to be either:

• Extraverted or Introverted
• Sensing or Intuitive
• Thinking or Feeling
• Judging or Perceiving

The possible combinations of the basic preferences form 16 different Personality Types.

We all tend to prefer using one mode of operation within each category more easily and more frequently than we use the other mode of operation.  Although everybody functions across the entire spectrum of the preferences, each individual has a preference which leans in one direction within the four categories. The combination of our four "preferences" defines our operating personality type.

Our Flow of Energy defines how we receive the essential part of our stimulation. Do we receive it mainly from within ourselves (Introverted) or from external sources (Extraverted)? Is our dominant function focused externally or internally?

How we Take in Information deals with our preferred method of taking in and absorbing information. Do we trust our five senses (Sensing) to take in information, or do we rely on our instincts (Intuitive)?

The third type of preference, how we prefer to Make Decisions, refers to whether we are prone to decide things based on logic and objective consideration (Thinking), or based on our personal, subjective value systems (Feeling).

The fourth preference, is concerned with how we deal with the external world on a Day-to-day Basis. Are we organized and purposeful, and more comfortable with scheduled, structured environments (Judging), or are we flexible and diverse, and more comfortable with open, casual environments (Perceiving)? From a theoretical perspective, we know that if our highest Extraverted function is a Decision Making function, we prefer Judging. If our highest Extraverted function is an Information Gathering function, we prefer Perceiving.

This does not mean that all (or even most) individuals will fall strictly into one category or another. If we learn by applying this tool that we are primarily

Extraverted, that does not mean that we don't also perform Introverted activities. We all function in all of these realms on a daily basis. We develop the ability to function well in realms which are not native to our basic personalities.   We develop some areas of ourselves more throughly than other areas. With this in mind, it becomes clear that we cannot box individuals into prescribed formulas for behavior. However, we can identify our natural preferences, and learn about our natural strengths and weaknesses within that context.

Understanding value

Value competition requires an accurate, consistent com­putation of your impacts on the customer operations that you affect. How much profit is being added? How soon has it begun to flow? How long before it fully accumulates?

There are three types of values that you must know about your business. Some of them will be restorative. They will restore insufficient values being generated by your cus­tomers due to unnecessarily excessive costs or correctible problems in their productivity. 

Other values will be opportu­nistic in the sense of enabling your customers to seize sales opportunities that would otherwise remain beyond their reach or increase the opportunity for them to earn higher margins on their current sales. 

A third type of values will be preventive.  Values that can prevent a customer from incurring a competitive disadvantage are priceless. No business can af­ford even a temporary disadvantage in either unnecessary costs incurred by its operations or in the opportunity costs of failing to fully commercialize one of its major markets. Failures that are not prevented must be corrected after the fact. At that stage, proposed remedies are expensive. They may not work. Even if they do work, it may be too late to regain a lost competitive advantage.

When you know what your value is worth to a customer, you and your customer can tell what kind of "partner mate­rial" you represent. If, working alone without you, the cus­tomer can obtain the same value as he would get from working with you, you will not be partner material. If your value is worth more than what the customer can obtain working alone or with any other supplier, you will be prime partner material.

If you want to be prime partner material, you must offer a prime value. Nobody must be able to offer the customer a better mix of value specifications, either as much value or as soon or as sure, depending on his needs. If you can achieve this position with your major customers, you will have a new basis for your price. No longer will your price need to reflect your costs or be constrained by competitive prices. You will be able to relate your price to the worth of your value on a return-on-investment basis. This is the way that value-based pricing can transcend competitive bidding. When competi­tion is no longer the index of price, the criterion of "fair price" shifts to customer value. All other bases for price become non-competitive.

Competencies for Qualitative Research Consultants

What are the specific competencies for Qualitative Research Consultants?

Here are eleven competencies under three headings. The specific competencies (listed below) are described by a set of fairly detailedstatements in the full document.

Consulting:

• Consulting
• Content Knowledge

Research:

• Conceptualisation and Design
• Research
• Interviewing
• Analysis

Professional and Business Practices:

• Communication
• Professional Practices
• Business Practices
• Project Management/Coordination
• Commitment to the Profession

What Clients Look For in a Professional Practitioner

Hallmarks of a True Professional

 The acceptance of the “greater good” – having regard for things more important than making money

Competence

Discretion

Adherence to Professional Rules

Impartiality

Responsibility

Integrity and Fairness

Ethical Conduct

We can regard the following list as the basis for professional practise:

  

• Competence
• Discretion
• Adherence to Professional Rules
• Impartiality
• Responsibility
• Integrity and Fairness
• Ethical Conduct