Close your eyes. Picture your favorite Disney or Pixar character. What do you like about them? Are they adventurous, neurotic, creative?
That’s what Nicole Guzzo ’17 wanted to know. The self-professed Disney fan, who majored in marketing through the Whittier Scholars Program, used the question to shape a survey for her senior project, in order to help marketers better target their consumers.
Guzzo surveyed hundreds of people to understand why people relate to their favorite Disney or Pixar character. The survey gathered data on people’s personalities, their favorite characters, their favorite movies, and their histories with Disney and its theme parks, among other points.
Among her many results, Guzzo found that people chose Disney characters that matched some aspect of their own personality, “demonstrating that we tend to use who we are to help choose our favorite,” she said in her project paper.
Moving forward, the finding underscores the need for Disney to diversify its characters, expanding the amount of people who identify with its roster.
Almost everyone surveyed preferred “good,” or virtuous, characters, as well.
“If we favor a character, a Disney product, with good alignment it could display to other people that our morals are very righteous,” Guzzo wrote. In fact, most people preferred characters that are adventurous, creative, extraverted, have a broad range of interests, aren’t very organized, and break from the norm—give or take a few points.
Guzzo also found that once someone’s a Disney fan, they will “very likely” stay one. She takes her own passion for consumer behavior, which she discovered at Whittier College, into her digital marketing career. Upon graduation this May, she begins a job at the global company ServiceMax.
Wondering who people’s favorite characters were, out of 86 choices, in Guzzo’s survey results? In no particular order: Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, Goofy, Minnie Mouse, Snow White, Tinker Bell, Winnie-the-Pooh, Donald Duck, and—who else—Mickey Mouse.
