Newest media predictor: Personality

A new study from Mindset Media states that personality is often a more effective prediction tool for media usage than the old typical tools: age, gender and income.
They found some of the typical: younger people consume more new media, like the internet; older generations prefer print; high earners are most likely to read a newspaper daily; and women read magazines more than men. But all-new dimensions were added.

I love how Mindset takes a different take on market research by typing any target audience on 21 of personality elements, each of which is parsed into five intensity levels, or what they call ‘Mindsets.’ You can tell they have been digging through social and personality psychology journals.

Reading about these findings are intriguing to me because my psychology, research and marketing background. But these findings are vital for marketers, who need to shake up the normal outlook of media consumption groups.

Here are their findings based on media:

INTERNET
• Top web users rank high in openness and in bravado
• Highly open people who favor the web are 153% more likely to always buy organic products and 104% more likely to drive a hybrid car.
• Low-level consumers of the internet tend to rank high in dogmatism, and are described as socially conservative people who tend to look to a religious or moral authority for guidance.

NEWSPAPERS
• Optimists spend more time with newspapers than any other medium, and they probably recycle it, too. They're 51% more likely to go out of their way to purchase recycled goods, 34% more likely to drive a luxury car and 30% more likely to have bought four or more PCs in the past two years.
• Dynamic people rank as the largest group of newspaper readers, followed by leaders.
• The strong-leadership group, described as people with strong decision-making skills and a preference to include everyone, read newspapers and also are 68% more likely to always purchase organic breakfast cereals and 61% more likely to buy three or more pairs of sneakers every year.

MAGAZINES
• Similar to Newspapers in that dynamic people rank as the largest group of readers.
• Open people, those who are willing to explore and are comfortable with emotions, are also more likely to try new foods, go out to the movies and own large music collections
• People who rank low in diligence and Introverts were found to shy away from print in the study. Introverts are 56% less likely to vote in presidential elections and 34% less likely to own a car.

TV
• Dynamic people who rank high in openness and leadership don't watch TV. Dynamic people are 50% more likely to watch less TV than the average person and are 59% more likely than the average person to watch less than an hour of TV daily.
• Dynamic people are also 45% more likely to buy movie tickets online and 26% more likely to describe themselves as Mac people.
• People with low dynamism are 53% more likely to watch more TV, as are those who rank on the low end for openness and leadership.

RADIO
• Dynamic people use radio everywhere and are also 36% more likely to click around from show to show (on both TV and radio) and use the mentality, "I'm always looking for something better than what I'm watching."
• Introverts and people low in diligence consume almost no radio. The nondiligent are also 50% more likely to watch five hours or more of TV a day, 32% more likely to not plan ahead and just pick a movie when they get to the theater, 27% more likely not to have an affinity for either PCs or Macs, and 25% more likely to restrict their kids from using the internet instead of other media.

To read the whole article: http://adage.com/article?article_id=136408