Influence of personality traits, values and attitudes in jewelry purchase

Abstract

Gold plays a significant role in the Indian psyche and India is also one of the largest gold markets in the world. With increasing urbanization and women prominence, women are more and more looking for jewelry that is contemporary, trendy etc. For this they look for variety in designs, quality and reliability. This is where the organized market plays a part. With majority of India still unorganized (organized share about 20%), the proliferation of organized jewelry chains is on the rise and this work aims to differentiate women, their value set, personality traits and attitude towards gold jewelry purchase considering change in lifecycle stage as the pivot (married vs unmarried). Data was collected through a questionnaire, using a 5 point Likert scale, a response set across selected values, personality traits and attitudes were undertaken. The sample was confined to urban contemporary women, unmarried and married limited to age groups of 18- 30 & 31-45 respectively. Two sample T test was used to analyze data. Results/Findings: - The findings provide significant differences in a host of traits. Four values namely, ‘Forward looking’, ‘Individualism’, ‘Gifting Trends’ and ‘Personal Grooming’ showed significant difference between unmarried and married women. Unmarried women were found to be less forward looking, more individualistic, cared more about personal grooming and put more thought into gifting. When it came to personality four traits were significant namely ‘Extroversion’, ‘Affective’ personality (emotional), ‘Agreeableness’ and ‘Narcissism’. Unmarried women were clearly the more extroverts, more emotional when it came to purchases (impulsive), cared less about haggling and bargaining while purchasing and slightly more narcissistic between the two groups. Attitude towards purchase was significant and high for sense of security, sense of achievement post a purchase for unmarried women. This directly links with value of individualism of unmarried women and married women also had a higher materialistic attitude when it came to purchase of gold jewelry showing that they expressed themselves through their jewelry. This helps to map the urban contemporary women along the scale of Schwartz’s values so as to make it clear for marketers of jewelry brands to know what values and personality traits to concentrate on when targeting one of these particular segments.