BRAND PERSONALITY

Relationship Of Brand Personality with Consumers

By

Acknowledgement

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Abstract

In response to criticism of brand personality measures that embrace other aspects besides brand personality, we developed a new brand personality measure consisting of personality items only. Belgian respondents (n = 12,789) participated in a study of 193 brands. The new scale consists of five factors that show an affinity with the Big Five human personality dimensions. Unlike existing scales, this new measure proved to be reliable for between-brand between-category comparisons, for between-brand within-category comparisons, and for between-respondent comparisons. Moreover, the scale showed high test-retest reliability and cross-cultural validity (in the US and nine other European countries).

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION6

Background of the Research6

Purpose of the Study9

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW10

Brand identity, brand image and brand personality10

Personality in human personality scales13

Personality in brand personality scales15

Moving beyond personality traits15

Brand personality dimensions17

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY19

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS23

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION25

REFERENCES27

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background of the Research

Strong and differentiated brands considerably enhance firm performance, and. In this paper we focus on brand personality. 'Brand personality is the set of human personality traits that are both applicable to and relevant for brands'. (Plummer, 1984, December/January) and contended that brand personality might be vital to understanding brand choice. Indeed, at a time in which consumers consider product quality as a granted and competitors can effortlessly copy product characteristics, a strong brand persona and personality are invaluable to construct brand equity (Aaker, 2001, pp: 22).

The foregoing puts brand personality high on the agenda of academics and practitioners alike. As a consequence, reliable, legitimate and practical measurement tools are invaluable. The work of Aaker (1997) motivated the most of the study on brand personality to date. She meticulously evolved a 44-item Brand Personality Scale that encompasses five broad dimensions: Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness. The scale has assisted as a brand personality measure in numerous studies, and its factor structure proved to be robust in several of them. However, Aaker's scale has recently been criticized on several grounds.

A first criticism pertains to the loose definition of brand personality, which embraces several other characteristics (such as age, gender, etc.) besides personality. This induces a assemble validity problem and leaves researchers and practitioners unsure of what they have actually measured: the seen brand personality (a sender aspect) or seen client characteristics (receiver aspects) (Aaker, 2001, pp: 33).

A second criticism anxieties the non-generalizability of the factor structure for analyses at the respondent level (for a exact brand or inside a exact product category). Because Aaker (1997) conducted all analyses on data aggregated across respondents ...