Integrating control theory, evolutionary psychology, and personality, this book presents an approach to motivation, personality, and consumer behavior. It seeks to account for how personality traits interact with situation to influence consumer attitudes and actions. It identifies elemental, compound, situational, and surface personality traits.

The book provides evidence that by understanding the individual dispositions that underlie consumer behavior, public policy officials and marketing specialists can develop better communication programs to influence and persuade their target audiences. The book shows how to employ the 3M model to segment the marketplace, provide psychographic inventories, position brands, create promotional themes, and develop brand personalities.

List of Figures. List of Tables. Preface. Part I: The Development of the Theory. 1. The 3M: A Meta-Theoretic Model of Motivation and Personality. 2. Theoretical Development of the 3M. Part II: The Elemental Traits. 3. Developing the Measures of the Eight Elemental Traits. Part III: Investigating Compound Traits. 4. Task Orientation. 5. The Need for Learning. 6. Competitiveness. 7. The Need for Activity. 8. The Need for Play. 9. General Self-Efficacy and the Discriminant Validity of the Six Compound Traits. Part IV: From Situational to Surface Traits. 10. From Health Motivation to Healthy Diet Lifestyle. 11. From Impulsiveness to Compulsive Consumption. 12. From Value Consciousness to Bargaining Proneness. 13. From Sports Interest to Sports Participation. 14. From Frugality to Modest Living. Part V: Additional Investigations Into the Hierarchical Model. 15. What is an Extrovert? They are More Than They Seem! 16. From Chick-Flicks to Guy-Flicks to Sci-Fi Junkies: Traits of Movie Hounds. 17. The 3M and Developing Marketing Communications: An Empirical Study. 18. Hard Questions and Tentative Answers About the 3M. Appendices. References.