Marketing Archetypes: Applying Jungian Psychology to Marketing Research

Abstract

In the current situation of growing information overload, individuals are gradually becoming less sensitive to traditional marketing communications. For this reason, traditional marketing research models are no longer capable of giving useful insights to management. This calls for new approaches that can grasp the inner meaning of consumer behaviors and evaluate their relevance. To this end, a new multidisciplinary approach is needed to interpret complex behavioral patterns so as to gain deeper and more effective insights into customers and to understand their behavioral patterns. In this paper, following a short introduction to the basic concepts of Jung's analytical psychology and their relevance for marketing, we propose the use of the Jungian archetypes to implement a market research model, considering the case of an Italian research company's development of the Archetipus® model.

Keywords:

• marketing research
• Jungian archetypes
• consumer behavior

Gandolfo Dominici is tenured Associate Professor of Marketing at the Dep. SEAS of the University of Palermo, Italy. He is the Scientific Director and a co-founder of the Business Systems Laboratory. He is a member of directors board of the World Organisation for Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC), chair of the Special Integration Group “Systems Applications in Business and Industry” for the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) and member of the Council of Advisers of the Consorzio Universitario di Economia Industriale e Manageriale (CUEIM). He is the author of more than 70 published articles and books. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the I.J. of Markets and Business Systems and of the I. J. of Electronic Marketing and Retailing and member of the editorial board of 14 international journals. His main research interests are: marketing, e-marketing, new product development, systems thinking and organizational cybernetics.

Valeria Tullio, Ph.D. in Public Relations, Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Jungian Analyst, member of the Italian Center of Analytic Psychology (CIPA-Istituto per l'Italia Meridionale e la Sicilia). Scholar of “Dream Psychology” and Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Palermo. Her main research interests are: clinical psychology and psychodynamic approach to health and psyche, symbolic approach to the marketing, eco-psychology.

Giuseppe Siino, Research Manager at Marketing Management s.r.l. He is chief of the research unit of quantitative surveys of the company since 2007.

Mario Tani, Ph.D. in Business Administration is Research Fellow in Technology Venturing in Biotechnology Firms at the Department of Economics, Management, Institutions of the University of Naples Federico II. His main research topics are focused on Stakeholder Management, Alliances, Innovation and Social Innovation, Social Enterprises.

Notes

1 Even though the article is the joint work of all the authors to conform to the Italian academic regulation, we attribute the contributions of authors as follows: Sections 1, 2 and 6 to Gandolfo Dominici, Section 3 to Mario Tani, Section 4 to Valeria Tullio, and Section 5 to Giuseppe Siino.