I went to an interesting talk earlier this week and I was introduced to an interesting personality matrix called Firo-B. It stands for Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation and is theory useful for analysing interpersonal relationships. It’s based around three different criteria which are Inclusion, Control and Affection, where people exhibit both Expressed and Wanted traits. Different people operate across different measures of these scales and it was interesting to see how these factors affect people’s behaviours.

It was interesting to see how different personality traits will affect behaviour. Obviously, these are all intrinsic factors, but there are others that also take their toll. The interesting thing is how you can apply these ideas to marketing. Say you’re trying to sell the best acne treatment around. You can appeal to different people based on their behaviour and what they’re looking for. You may consider it all psycho-babble, but if it can help you market your product better, it’s worth taking a look.