Measurement of Personality through Modified Instrument: A Study of Young Consumers of India

Abstract

Purpose The present work on personality of a consumer focuses on revising and building a comprehensive framework that would help ascertain personality of an individual from consumer behaviour perspective. It proposes a relook at the validation and reconsideration of earlier developed scales in the subject of personality with special reference to Big Five Personality Framework. A sample of 624 was chosen for this study and multi-stage sampling was adopted in view of layer wise spread of population. Based on the results of exploratory factor analysis (EFA), some of the dimensions of Big Five Personality Framework have been retained whereas few emerging constructs were adopted for their relevance to consumer behaviour. Emotional stability and conscientiousness were left unchanged, whereas extraversion, agreeableness and openness were transformed to new constructs for their foundation in organisational behaviour and having relevance of newly adopted constructs in consumer behaviour. One more construct ‘conserving propensity’ was appended to Big Five Model of personality to make it Big Six from Consumer Behaviour Perspective. Background The number of questionnaires either developed or simply used for exploring the personality of an individual has increased in manifolds in recent years. While the rigour applied to the questionnaire development process may be improving, but there still emerges need to make the use of sophisticated procedures to determine the realistic reliability and validity of the instrument, particularly in the field of consumer behaviour and consumer personality. Design/Methodology/Approach The research design was exploratory in nature that helped the researcher in identifying the items falling in the particular construct. EFA was applied for identifying items and constructs. Furthermore, CFA was employed to determine the reliability and validity of the proposed instrument. The quantitative data was collected through structured questionnaire from young consumers being part of higher educational institutes vis-a-vis colleges and universities of J&K state. A collection of prominent tools like Cronbach’s alpha, principal component analysis and structural equation modelling was applied for validation and development of the modified scale. Results Overall results have shown that scale is highly reliable and possesses both discriminant and convergent validity. Furthermore, other reliability forms are on higher side which supports the consistency of the scale. The present scale would have greater credence for researcher in the field of organisational behaviour, consumer behaviour and interdisciplinary areas of both the subjects.