Toward a theory of motivation and personality with application to word-of-mouth communications

Literally hundreds of scales have been developed to measure personality constructs relevant to consumer behavior, marketing, and organizational behavior issues. A key problem is that to our knowledge no theory or model has been developed that provides an organizational structure for understanding the relationships among these many scales. The present article has two goals. The first is to present the theoretical basis for the 3M Model of Motivation and Personality [Mowen JC. The 3M Model of Motivation and Personality: Theory and Empirical Applications to Consumer Behavior. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.] and identify how the model works to organize personality constructs into a hierarchically ordered nomological net. In addition, the article illustrates the 3M Model approach via an empirical study that compares the trait antecedents of enduring dispositions to send and receive marketplace information of respondents in the United States and Korea.