DOING THE GATR ROCK©:



DOING THE GATR ROCK©:

MOTIVATING YOUR CUSTOMERS AND EMPLOYEES

A Presentation for the Customers of ACNielson

by

John C. Mowen, Ph.D.

Helsinki, Finland, April 24, 2001

John Mowen holds the Noble Chair of Marketing Strategy, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA, 74078. He can be reached at: johnmowen@.

Doing the GATR ROCK©: Motivating Your Customers and Employees

Speech for ACNielson, Helsinki, Finland, April 24, 2001

John C. Mowen, Ph.D.

First, I would like to thank Päivi Kauppinen and ACNielson for inviting me to speak to you today. This is my first trip to Finland, and I hope that it is not my last. Your country is beautiful.

Prior to coming to Finland, I did some research on your country. On the Virtual Finland web site, I learned a number of interesting facts. First, I discovered that the population is a little over 5 million people, which is about the same as my home state of Oklahoma. I also found that Nokia transformed itself from a natural resources company to the leading provider in the world of cellular phones in less than 10 years–incredible!! Finally, I learned about the famous people from Finland, such as Jean Sibelius and Linus Torvalds. Most importantly, I discovered that Santa Claus comes from Finland.

But, I am here to talk about motivation, not Santa Claus. In fact, I hope to accomplish 3 goals in the next 40 minutes or so. First, I will provide you with what I believe are the 8 fundamental axioms of motivation. These axioms provide a framework for understanding how to obtain maximum performance from employees and maximum brand commitment from customers. In addition, the axioms identify the characteristics of the highly motivated person. Second, I will show how the axioms can be employed to help you listen to your customers–which is the theme of this conference. Third, I will show you how these axioms can be put to practical use to positively influence your customers and your employees.

Before launching into my work on motivation, why do I want to link the ideas to both employees and customers? The answer is that you cannot please your customers unless you please your employees. Conversely, if you have not pleased your customers, you will have unhappy employees. Motivating customers and employees go hand in hand.

Background Information

Prior to presenting the eight axioms of motivational mastery, let me provide some background information. In 1993, I published a book with Simon & Schuster entitled Judgment Calls: High Stakes Decisions in a Risky World. Until the publication of this book, my career had focused on understanding how people make decisions. In the process of writing Judgment Calls, I interviewed all sorts of high stakes decisions makers–such as the Head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. What I found was that emotions and motivational needs dramatically influenced decision making. This revelation caused me to change the direction of my career and to move from the study of decision making to the study of motivation and personality.

For the next six years, I devoted my research life to identifying the characteristics of the highly motivated person. Last year, I published with Kluwer Academic Press a book that presents my theory, which is called The 3M Model of Motivation and Personality. This book developed my theory of motivation and reported 17 research studies that tested the model.

As a professor in a business college, I wanted to communicate what I have learned to the business community. I quickly learned, however, that the dry academic ideas did not go over very well. Frankly, when executives heard me talk about comparators, schemas, structural equation modeling, and so forth, they quickly went to sleep.

After recognizing this problem, I took another approach and began analyzing the ideas of well-known motivational gurus (like Stephen Covey, Zig Ziglar and Anthony Robbins). Some people, particularly academicians, discount the ideas and advice of people like Zig Ziglar. One cannot, however, scoff at their success. These individuals have sold millions of books and attract tens of thousands of people to hear their speeches. Based upon these results, there must be something to what they are saying. As a result, I did a content analysis of the motivational principles identified by 22 of these motivational gurus. The content analysis revealed that their ideas can be boiled down to eight basic, fundamental axioms.

Importantly, the axioms are completely consistent with the tenets of the 3M Model. When one gets the same answer through two very different research approaches, the confidence in the veracity of the answer increases dramatically. Bottom line–because they are so fundamental, the 8 axioms provide the basic principles for motivating yourself, your employees, and your customers.

In order to help others, and most importantly myself, remember the 8 axioms, I have adopted the acronym GATR ROCK© as a mnemonic device. In fact, I am thinking of creating a GATR ROCK© symbol of an alligator standing on a boulder wearing sun glasses and holding an electric guitar. Now, I have to admit that the acronym is a little fruity. But let me ask you this. How many of you have read the book by Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? Worldwide, it sold millions of copies, and has been translated into myriad languages. Yet, when I ask people who have read the book to list the 7 habits, they can usually only remember 2 or 3. I guarantee that at the end of my talk, you will be able to remember GATR ROCK© and the 8 axioms of motivational mastery.

GATR ROCK©: The Eight Axioms of Motivational Mastery

One of the current professional goals is to understand the characteristics of the highly motivated person. So, how would you know a highly motivated person even if you encountered him or her. One place to look is in the lists of famous people. For my talk here, I considered a number of famous people. For example, there is our ex-President Bill Clinton. While he is famous, Mr. Clinton’s motivational style is not what I was looking for. Then, I thought--why not use Santa Claus. Because he is known for his heroics throughout the world, he is the perfect exemplar. So, here goes my lighthearted exploration into GATR ROCK© and Santa as the highly motivated person.

Santa Claus and the GATR ROCK© Axioms

Axiom 1. Set high goals. Santa’s ambitious goal is to drive a sled, pulled by 8 tiny reindeer, all over the world, to break into homes, to consume cookies and milk at each stop, and to place toys around countless Christmas trees for children.

Axiom 2. Take Action. Santa has little time to visit all these kids’ homes. He must act and act fast. He cannot dilly-dally around. He must give maximum effort.

Axiom 3. Do Tasks Well. To accomplish his goal, Santa must complete a series of tasks, including: reading a huge amount of mail, producing all of the toys, matching the toys to the right kids, and then completing delivery by dawn.

Axiom 4. Take Responsibility. Santa knows that no one else would attempt this massive job, he does it every year, and he knows that he is accountable for the results. He knows that if something goes wrong, parents will blame it on him.

Axiom 5. Cultivate Your Resources. Santa efficiently uses the 4 fundamental resources. He takes case of his social resources–his elves and reindeer. He efficiently uses material resources–his sled and all of the stuff necessary to produce the toys. He effectively uses information resources to track who gets what. Finally, despite looking overweight, he must take care of his body resources or he would not be able to work for 24 consecutive hours.

Axiom 6. Be Optimistic. You can just hear his sanguine outlook in his jolly Ho, Ho, Ho.

Axiom 7. Seek Creativity. To produce all the different toys for millions of kids takes incredible originality.

Axiom 8. Know Thyself and Thy Customers. Santa knows his customers. He keeps track of whether kids are naughty or nice and is even able to give them what they want.

In sum, Santa Claus provides an exemplar of a person that has achieved motivational mastery. I should ad that using Santa Claus as my example of motivational mastery has a number of advantages. He will not die. He demonstrates every year his drive to succeed. And, foremost, he will never succumb to the sins of the flesh like Bill Clinton, drunkenly drive a Mercedes into a tree like Mike Tyson, try to pick up a prostitute like the actor–Hugh Grant, or be charged with firing a gun in a dance club like Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs.

Let me give one final word of warning, however, about my Santa Claus analogy. I am not saying that we should treat our customers like Mr. Claus does his. Santa does not have to make a profit. What I am saying is that this cultural icon is one highly motivated dude.

GATR ROCK© and Listening to Your Customers

The theme of this conference is “Does Anybody Hear the Consumer?” Well, let me ask another question. As managers and researchers, do we know what we are listening for?

To answer this question, I will use another strange analogy. You are probably familiar with the SETI project. SETI stands for “Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.” For this project a group of scientists has set up an array of radio telescopes that comb the heavens for radio signals that show signs of having originated from alien intelligent beings. There are many communications issues that must be solved in this search for alien life forms via radio telescopes. In particular, which of the millions of radio frequency channels do we use? Further, if we hear something, it could be millions of years old because the senders are millions of light years away in space. By the time we respond, the aliens may have moved or even disappeared. There is also the possibility that there are multiple groups of aliens out there each using different radio frequencies.

Let us pretend that our customers are aliens attempting to communicate with us. Like aliens, our customers are hard to find, difficult to communicate with, and possess needs that we do not understand. Further, it takes time to listen, time to decipher what we receive, and time to respond. There are different groups of customers telling us different things through different channels. Finally, do we even know what to listen for?

As it turns out, GATR ROCK© tells us what to listen for and how to identify the different groups of customers. To illustrate the idea, let’s imagine that we are listening to our customers talk about preparing the large meal of the day. Each GATR ROCK© axiom is like a channel through which we gather information.

1. Goal channel. What are our customers goals? Is it a healthy diet; a tasty, hearty meal; a quick, easy to prepare meal, or some other end state. Probe to identify segments with different goals.

2 Action channel. Activities are the micro-steps that must be performed in order to accomplish tasks, such as using tools, moving from place to place, thinking, observing, and communicating. What activities do they like or dislike doing when cooking–e.g., using tools to dice vegetables, standing over a hot stove. Can we help reduce the effort required to prepare the meal?

3. Task channel. What tasks can our product help them accomplish? Some tasks include: planning a menu, shopping for food, preparing food for cooking, and cooking the food. Can we do some of these tasks? How can we help the consumer do the tasks better?

4. Responsibility channel. Do consumers worry about the responsibility and risk of meal preparation. How can we reduce these risks?

5. Resource channel. What resources do they need to prepare a meal? What material (i.e., utensils, equipment, etc.), social, information, and body resources can we provide?

6. Optimism channel. How optimistic are consumers about the success of the meal? What can we do to improve the mood state of our customers and their optimism for success.

7. Creativity channel. Do our customers worry about creating new and different meals? How can we help them be more innovative in their meal preparation.

8. Knowledge of customer channel. Do we know the personality and motives of our customers?

The assessment of consumer motives through the channels of the 8 axioms provides guidance for conducting marketing research. Whether you employ depth interviews, focus groups, or survey research studies, the 8 axioms provide a basis for formulating questions. Once we have this information we can create products and services that can fulfill these needs of our customers. In addition, it will give us information on how to communicate our products and services to our customers.

GATR ROCK© and Motivating Employees

Because of their generality, the GATR ROCK© axioms can be employed as a guide for motivating employees as well customers. The following is a short story that illustrates this application of the axioms. The story is taken from a forthcoming book written by myself and Keith Murnighan--a colleague at Northwestern University. The book will be published in October by Wiley Trade Press and is titled, The Art of High Stakes Decision Making.

The Case of New York Brewpub

Put yourself in the shoes of Rob Bronson. You are 36 years old and have just received the national entrepreneur of the year award. You and your partner have successfully opened 27 New York Brewpubs in the last nine years. Each day you worked at the original brewpub serving customers and making beer. It is 1995, and investment bankers are at your door, wanting you to take your company public so that they can make you rich.

In 1986, you left a position as a senior analyst on Wall Street to pursue your dream of successfully developing a restaurant chain. You and your partner, Paul Springfield, make a great team. You favor a conservative approach to growth while Paul, a natural marketer, constantly pushes you to grow faster. Your decisions so far have been phenomenally successful. Your strategy of carefully growing by 3 pubs a year has really paid off.

Now that you have won this big award, however, the competitive environment in the brewing industry is changing. Investment bankers are interested in other brewpubs, including Manhattan Brewpub, Big Apple, California Brewpub, Big City Brewpub, and Simpsons. There is a chance that each company may announce public offerings this year. You realize that within a one-year period, there may be $300 to $400 million investment dollars flowing into brewpubs.

Now, you are faced with a classic tough call. Do you continue your strategy of avoiding serious debt and slowly growing your company or do you go public and exponentially grow your company as the investment bankers propose? You face a soon-to-close window of threat and opportunity. If you continue your present strategy of slow growth, your more highly capitalized competitors could invade your territory and potentially drive you out of business. If you follow the investment bankers’ advice and double the number of New York Brewpubs each year for four consecutive years, you could potentially make several million dollars but it will also place extreme demands on your managerial ability. Either choice could mean great success or dismal failure. You only have a few weeks to make the decision. Once your competitors go public, you may not get a second chance.

Rob Bronson and his partner had only a few weeks to make their decision. They worried that if they failed to act they would fall behind the power curve. That is, their competitors would become so well capitalized that no matter how hard they tried, or how well they made their future decisions, they would be unable to compete effectively. To stay ahead of the curve, they would have to make the investment. Yet, there was an incredible downside to the high growth strategy. If the strategy failed they could lose it all. A failing scenario was easy to develop. They knew that in order to grow, they would have to open numerous brewpubs. This would require moving from franchising their restaurants to having them company owned. Could they find managers that shared their vision and drive? Could they motivate them to perform at the same levels as their franchisers who had their own money tied to the success or failure of their restaurants?

They faced a tremendously tough call, one that presented them with a true decision dilemma. If you were Rob Bronson, what would you do?

Well, what happened to Rob Bronson and his partner and New York Brewpubs? After making a small public offering of stock, they paid the investment bankers and retired their debt of $3 million. This left them with $15 million for expansion. They began opening pubs but quickly realized that it was extremely difficult to find suitable properties in the fast growing industry. Over the next three years, they opened as many pubs as their experience and sound judgment indicated. By 1998, they had 67 locations.

Early in 1999, however, the industry started collapsing as competitor after competitor entered the market. For example, in Dallas the number of brewpubs increased from 3 to 40 in two and a half years. There was almost complete devastation for what was an emerging brewpub industry. In early 1999, there were about 8,000 brewpubs. By 2000, the number had been cut in half. Unfortunately, New York Brewpub was caught in the carnage. In 2000, the company went bankrupt. In the end, every publicly traded brewpub company either went bankrupt or was purchased at distressed prices by another firm. Paul Springfield is now running a dining room for a university. Rob Bronson is a consultant for small companies, counseling them on how to grow and manage risk.

GATR ROCK© and New York Brewpub

The 8 axioms have much to say about the motivation of Rob Bronson, his partner, and the managers of the company stores that were opened. Let’s systematically investigate the situation from the perspective of GATR ROCK©.

Μ Goals. After the public offering, Rob’s goals changed. Prior to the offering, his goal was grow the company slowly and carefully, pleasing himself. After the offering, his goal shifted to growing fast and pleasing the investment bankers.

Μ Activities. After the public offering his daily activities shifted from serving customers and managing a few individuals whom he had known for years to talking to investors, traveling extensively, and managing a fast growing company. He quickly realized that he did not enjoy these new activities as much as what he was doing before.

ΜTasks. The tasks that he had to complete changed dramatically. For example, previously employees in the organization had bought franchises from Rob and his partner. Now, he had to recruit unknown individuals to work for him in company-owned stores. Similarly, a major new task was turning out quarterly reports for investors and meeting the earnings expectations of the investors. A key question was whether he had the task skills required to make the undertaking successful.

ΜResponsibility. Previously, he was accountable only to himself and his partner. Now, he was

accountable to investors and many more employees.

ΜResources. While Rob now had more material resources with which to work, he actually had fewer social, information, and body resources. His social resources decreased because he did not have personal ties to the new managers that he hired. Information resources decreased because he was in an unfamiliar ball game of managing a public company. Finally, the demands of the new job were taking a toll on his body resources as well.

ΜOptimism. Prior to going public, he and his partner were highly optimistic about the growth pattern and success of their business. After going public, the work load and the pressure of growing very fast caused optimism to fade.

ΜCreativity. Seemingly, the ability to find novel solutions to problems decreased after going public as well. The stress and pressure of meeting the demands of investment bankers decreased innovativeness.

ΜKnowledge of Self and Others. Prior to going public, brewpubs were opened in known

markets by people known to Rob. After going public, they had to go into unknown markets with unknown people. In addition, he did not have a good understanding of how much he would like taking a company public.

The GATR ROCK© axioms help to explain the motivational causes of the failure of the New York Brewpub enterprise. When combined with a changing environment in which the market was saturated with competitors, the endeavor was doomed to fail.

Knowing Your Customers and Employees

Axiom 8 tells us to know our customers and employees. This can be accomplished by careful observation and empathy. In addition, traditional marketing research methods can be employed to gather data on their demographic, psychographic, and personality characteristics along with their job satisfaction or brand and company commitment. In the last 10 minutes of my talk, I am going to present a brief overview of the 3M Model of Motivation and Personality, and show you the results of two studies–one on customers and one on employees.

Overview of the 3M Model

The 3M Model is a meta-theory that combines elements of evolutionary psychology, control theory, and hierarchical personality models to provide an understanding of the relationship among personality, motivation, and behavior. The model is derived from four basic concepts.

The Basic Principles of the 3M Model

1. Personality traits represent enduring dispositions to behave.

2. Personality traits act as reference points for guiding behavior.

3. Traits are organized into a 4-level hierarchy based upon their level of abstraction.

4. Multiple traits act together to influence behavior.

The 4- level hierarchy is a critical aspect of the 3M Model. The four levels and their definitions are described below.

Elemental traits are the underlying dispositions to act based upon genetics and early learning history. There are eight elemental traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, material needs, arousal needs, and physical needs. They can be remembered by the acronym: OCEAN MAP.

Compound traits are the enduring dispositions to act resulting from the effects of elemental traits, learning history, and culture. Examples are: need for achievement, competitiveness, need for activity, self-efficacy, altruism, and future time orientation.

Situational traits are the general dispositions to act within broad job situational contexts. In the consumer domain they include: health motivation, value consciousness, and general product innovativeness. In the employee domain, they include: job resourcefulness, productivity orientation, and career orientation.

Surface traits are the narrowly based dispositions to act within specific behavioral contexts. In the consumer domain, they include healthy diet lifestyles or exercise propensity and complaint propensity. In the employee domain, they include customer orientation and organizational citizenship.

The power of the 3M Model is that because of its hierarchical nature, it can predict behavior much more successfully than traditional personality models. This occurs for two reasons. First, the situational and surface traits account for the effects of the press of the situational environment as well as the impact of more basic elemental and compound traits. Second, the model employs multiple traits to predict and understand behavior, rather than single traits acting in isolation from each other.

An Application of the 3M Model to Consumer Behavior

In my research, I have employed to 3M Model to understand a variety of consumer behaviors, including bargaining proneness, sports participation, and healthy diet lifestyles. Appendix III provides a diagram of the motivational network of traits predictive of healthy diet lifestyles, which is defined as the enduring disposition to reduce fat and sugar in the diet and to eat three well-balanced meals each day. These data were obtained from a consumer panel and is based upon the responses of about 226 men and women. Each variable was measured by four or more items using nine-point scales. Structural equation modeling was employed to obtain the path diagram. The motivational network is composed of all traits that are connected either directly or indirectly with the surface trait. In this case the motivational network is composed of: health motivation, health innovativeness, self-efficacy, need for body resources, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extroversion, and need for arousal (negative relation).

Importantly, the motivational network can be employed to identify segments of customers. This was done, and Appendix IV provides the results. Four clusters were identified: healthy eaters, cautious dieters, moody dieters, and couch potatoes. The healthy eaters were particularly noted for being high in health motivation, health innovativeness, self-efficacy, need for body resources, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.

My research is showing that advertising messages can be built around the more basic traits that lead to the surface traits. For example, in another study we found that people who bargain hard for prices are highly competitive. We then created advertisements that had either high or low competitiveness themes. Consumers who liked to bargain responded better to the ads employing the high competitiveness message. Conversely, those who did not like to bargain responded better to the low competitiveness message.

An Application to Employee Motivation

My colleagues Tom Brown, Jane Licata, Todd Donovan, and Eric Harris and I are using the 3M Model to investigate employee motivation. We employ the same methodology as used in the consumer studies to develop motivational networks of traits that predict high performing employees. For example, we have found that the surface trait of productivity orientation predicts the sales of real estate agents but not customer satisfaction. Interestingly, customer orientation predicts customer satisfaction but not sales. However, both productivity orientation and customer orientation predict self-rated performance. Furthermore, a mixed set of variables is predictive of productivity and of customer orientation. We are now beginning to apply the results of this research to the training and selection of employees.

Summary and Conclusions

Well, we have come a long way in the last 40 minutes. I have proposed 8 Axioms of Motivational Mastery. The acronym, GATR ROCK© , was created to help you (and me) remember the principles. I have suggested that the axioms provide channels through which you can listen to your customers and your employees. I have suggested that by following GATR ROCK©, you can motivate your employees and your customers. In addition, the principles can be employed as a pathway to self motivation as well. Finally, I gave a very brief example of how the 3M Model can be employed to measure the motivational network of customers and employees.

There are two reasons why you should remember the GATR ROCK© axioms. First, I am convinced that they are basic to understanding how to motivate your employees, your customers, and yourself. Second, they provide a structure for thinking and living. Pilots and astronauts have checklists of procedures for performing important tasks, like landing an aircraft. Similarly, the 8 axioms provide a checklist for achieving motivational mastery.

In closing, let me answer one of the questions that I am frequently asked. That is, among the 8 axioms which is most important. One approach to answering is to turn to famous quotations. For example, Thomas Edison focused on the role of effort when he said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” This advice is tempered, however, by the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, who said, “Never confuse motion with action.” He is absolutely correct when he cleverly suggested that just because you see lots of activity, it does not mean that anything is happening.

Both of these quotes, and many others like them, focus on the second GATR ROCK© axiom “take action.” But I would like to suggest that Sir Edmund Hilary, who was the first to conquer Mount Everest, may have had it right when he said: “Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.”

Hilary climbed mountains because he loved the task. When people have a passion for and a love of completing a particular task, they become highly motivated. As a result, they will give high effort, they will set high goals, they will take responsibility, and so forth. Thus if you select employees who love to perform the tasks that compose their job, they will be highly motivated to excel. Similarly, if you produce a good or service that outperforms the competition in helping consumers complete tasks that are important to them, they will beat down your door for it.

So, what do we do in order to hear our customers and motivate our employees? We do the GATR ROCK©.

Appendix I

GATR ROCK© & Customer and Employee Motivation

John C. Mowen, Copyright 2001

|Axioms |Customer Implications |Employee Implications |

|1. Set |Tell customers your product/service goals, which sets |Provide employees with a challenging vision for the |

|Challenging Goals |their expectations for the performance of your good or |organization. Ensure that employees understand their |

| |service. Know your customers’ goals. |customers’ goals. |

|2. Encourage |Encourage your customers to take action to purchase your |Set expectations for and reward high effort. Avoid punishing|

|Action |product by eliminating as many action barriers as |mistakes made through proaction. Encourage responsible risk |

| |possible. Know what actions customers like and dislike. |taking and actions that will serve customers. |

|3. Do Tasks |Show customers how your product will help them accomplish |Clearly define job tasks. Set standards for task execution |

|Well |their tasks. Show them that your product accomplishes |and train employees to do tasks. Provide feedback. Create |

| |tasks better than the competition. |flow. Require tasks to be done on time. Train to provide |

| | |task skills. |

|4. Accept |Accept responsibility for identifying & satisfying |Hold employees accountable for their performance, and empower|

|Responsibility |customer needs. Take responsibility for problems. |them to identify and solve problems ethically. |

|5. Cultivate |Act to protect and enhance customer resources. Create |Encourage social networks among employees. Protect employee |

|Resources |social bonds. Protect customers’ body and material |body resources. Give information needed to perform job. |

| |resources. Give information needed by customers to buy |Give material resources to do job and to live adequately. |

| |and use product. | |

|6. Encourage |Act to create positive mood state among customers. Create|Encourage passion among employees and inculcate belief that |

|Optimism |belief among customers that your product will solve their |they can succeed. Take actions to encourage positive |

| |problem. |employee mood states. |

|7. Seek |Design goods and services that solve problems in an |Encourage employees to be open to new experiences and to find|

|Creativity |innovative way. Always maintain creative spark in |creative ways to solve problems. Hire people who embrace |

| |assisting customers. |innovation and change. Promote incremental change. |

|8. Know thy |Understand customer motivational needs, their problems, |Understand employee motivational needs and match to |

|Customers and Employees|and their likes and dislikes. |organizational personality. |

Appendix II

The 3M Model of Motivation and Personality[1]

Principles and Key Definitions

The Basic Principles of the 3M Model

1. The 3M Model provides a means of identifying the motivational needs of customers and employees. It operationalizes the GATR ROCK© axioms so that they have utility.

2. Personality traits represent enduring dispositions to behave.

3. Personality traits act as reference points for guiding behavior.

4. Personality traits form a 4-level hierarchy based upon their level of abstraction.

5. Multiple traits combine to influence behavior through a motivational network.

6. By identifying the motivational network of traits that influence behavior, managers can identify segments of customers, develop persuasive messages, and identify high performing employees.

Key Definitions

Elemental traits are the underlying dispositions to act based upon genetics and early learning history. There are eight elemental traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, material needs, arousal needs, and physical needs. They can be remembered by the acronym: OCEAN MAP.

Compound traits are the enduring dispositions to act resulting from the effects of elemental traits, learning history, and culture. Examples are: need for achievement, competitiveness, need for activity, self-efficacy, altruism, and future time orientation.

Situational traits are the general dispositions to act within broad job situational contexts. In the consumer domain they include: health motivation, value consciousness, and general product innovativeness. In the employee domain, they include: job resourcefulness, productivity orientation, and career orientation. Situational traits represent the broad end-state goals of customers and employees.

Surface traits are the narrowly based dispositions to act within specific behavioral contexts. In the consumer domain, they include healthy diet lifestyles or exercise propensity and complaint propensity. In the employee domain, they include customer orientation and organizational citizenship. Surface traits are composed of the specific activities that customers and employees perform to reach their goals.

Appendix III

Healthy Diet Trait Clusters

| |Cluster 1 |Cluster 2 |Cluster 3 |Cluster 4 |

| |N = 77 |N = 25 |N = 66 |N = 58 |

| |Moody Dieters |Couch Potatoes |Cautious Dieters |Healthy |

|Trait | | | |Eaters |

|Healthy Diet Disposition |5.72b |3.05a |6.96c |7.87d |

|Health Motivation |6.34b |5.05a |6.56b |7.65c |

|Health Innovativeness |3.38b |1.97a |3.13b |3.99c |

|Self-efficacy |6.02a |6.54b |7.15c |7.95d |

|Introversion |4.67b |3.83a |4.06ab |4.67a |

|Body Needs |5.16c |3.55a |4.29b |6.71d |

|Arousal Needs |4.43b |3.00a |2.97a |4.63b |

|Emotional Instability |4.81b |2.57a |2.95a |2.71a |

|Conscientiousness |6.18b |4.82a |6.03b |7.27c |

|Note: Means with different letters are significantly different at p < .05. |

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[1]John C. Mowen, The 3M Model of Motivation and Personality, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press, Dordrecht, 2000.

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