Research - brand personalities

THE EFFECT OF BRAND PERSONALITY ON BRAND RELATIONSHIP, ATTITUDE AND PURCHASE INTENTION WITH A FOCUS ON BRAND COMMUNITY
- academy of marketing studies journal

Humanizing a brand allows the brand to play a more central role in customers’
lives and allows them to project their selves to create the desirable relationships they seek (Aaker 1997; Wallendorf and Arnould 1988). Moreover, people feel comfort when they sense that the brand “fits” with their self-concept (Aaker 1999; Swaminathan, Page, and Gu ̈rhan-Canli 2007). In order to identify the potential of brand personality, it is meaningful to understand how the underlying mechanisms influence the consumer-brand relationship and the brand attitude as well as which brand personality traits affect consumers more positively. Therefore, in this study, we investigate the influences of brand personality traits on consumer-brand relationships and brand attitudes.

On the other hand, a brand personality can be formulated by direct and indirect brand contact experienced by the consumer who encounters the brands (Plummer 1985; Shank and Langmeyer 1994). Thus, a brand personality can be created from both product- related factors (such as packaging, price and physical attributes) and factors not related to the product (such as the consumer’s experience, symbols, marketing activities, and word of mouth) (McCracken 1989; Batra, Lehmann and Singh 1993; Aaker 1997).

The definition of brand personality definition also contains demographic feature such as age, gender, and class as well as the personality features of a human (Levy 1959). Like personality characteristics, these demographic characteristics are deduced directly from the employees, the brand’s user image and indirectly from other brand associations. After understanding the necessity for further empirical study, Aaker (1997) created a measurement scale for five types of brand personality traits.

Aaker (1997) conducted research to demonstrate that brands can be differentially associated with personality traits in consumers’ minds. In this research, brand personality was identified using five dimensions of brand personality; 1) sincerity, 2) excitement, 3) competence, 4) sophistication and 5) ruggedness. Sincerity is represented by the attributes of down-to-earth, real, and honest; excitement contains the attributes of daring, exciting, imaginative and contemporary; competence is typified by the attributes of intelligent, reliable, secure and confident; sophistication is typified by the attributes of glamorous, upper class, good looking and charming; and ruggedness is represented by the attributes of tough, outdoorsy, masculine and western. Brand personality can be associated with personality traits through learning and experience, and this association allows the consumer to express themselves or symbolize their benefits through brand consumption (Aaker 1997). These five brand personality dimensions appear to explain the way American consumers perceive brands.

The consumer may perceive a brand personality differently depending on their culture. Here, we use brand personality dimensions as perceived by Koreans. Yang and Cho (2002) developed new scales of brand personality that were appropriate for Korea. The new scales of brand personality were composed of 38 questions, resulting in five factors of brand personality. These brand personality dimensions are 1) sincerity, 2) excitement, 3) sophistication, 4) ruggedness, and 5) cute. The new dimension of brand personality that is different from those of Aaker (1997) is ‘cute’, which is represented by attributes such as primness, prettiness, cuteness and coyness. In this research, we use the scales of brand personality by Yang and Cho (2002) in the Korean brand situation.