When you run an eCommerce business, understanding your customers and their purchasing behaviour, through user and product research is key. But the challenge when businesses use classic personality tests (created by academics) to understand their customers, is that the data isn’t quite there, it’s one step away from being commercially usable. 
Which is where Jon Puleston, Vice President of Innovation at the data insights and consulting company, Kantar, fits in. Jon is a multi-award winning market researcher known worldwide for his thought leadership and new perspectives on the way in which we conduct user and product research. 
He chats with Guido about his recent paper on how to develop a more robust measurement tool that can provide a clear picture of human decision making (and also consumer decision making), at scale, as well as the techniques he learned along the way that can be applied in the wider world of research. 
“By really understanding the underlying personality traits and how people think, is a really brilliant starting point for developing better forms of communication. And really, I think that, you know, that it revolutionises how you think about developing advertising, communication.”
Key takeaways:

• The challenge of measuring personality with classical techniques
• Why your past can indicate your future personality
• Why the big five personality construct doesn’t translate into commercial decision making
• How commercial companies can use Jon’s paper
• How far personality is a predictor for buying behaviour
• The power of social influence on decision making 

Resources: 

• https://www.kantar.com/