Motivation, Personality and Affect

Dimensions of Brand Personality and Their Importance in Consumer Behavior

• Consumers tend to build relationships with brands and imbue them with personality characteristics.
• Anthropomorphic theory explains why people tend to grant human qualities to non-human objects, including brands.
• By imbuing brands with human personality traits, consumers use them as a language to communicate their identities, status, and aspirations in social groups.
• Brand personality consists of the set of human characteristics associated with a brand, and it has gained increasing attention in the marketing literature.
• Aaker's brand personality scale is the most widely used and well-developed, consisting of sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness dimensions.
• The focus on Aaker's dimensions is warranted due to their psychometric rigor and linguistic accessibility in discussion with consumers.
• The study aims to explore what brands/products consumers perceive as exemplary or not exemplary of each brand personality dimension, and what common characteristics emerge across these brands.
• The study also aims to identify which brands consumers perceive as excluded from possessing a particular personality dimension and what common characteristics emerge across these brands for each personality dimension.
• The sincerity dimension includes brand personality traits such as down-to-earth, honest, and wholesome.
• The excitement dimension includes traits such as daring, spirited, and imaginative.
• The competence dimension includes traits such as up-to-date, reliable, and intelligent.
• The sophistication dimension includes traits such as successful, upper-class, and charming.
• The ruggedness dimension includes traits such as outdoorsy, tough, and daring.

Interview-based study on consumers' conceptualizations of brand personality

• The study involved conducting interviews with 66 graduate students from a Scandinavian business school.
• The purpose of the study was to understand the concept of brand personality.
• The average age of the informants was 23.6 years, with 40 females and 26 males.
• Students were recruited by announcing the opportunity to participate in the interviews during three graduate courses.
• Each informant was paid 100 Norwegian crones (or approximately 18 US dollars) for their participation.
• Interviews lasted between 50 and 60 minutes and were recorded with the informant's permission.
• Aaker’s (1997) brand personality scale was presented to the informants and all five dimensions were explained in detail.
• Informants were asked about their perceptions of two out of the five dimensions of brand personality in Aaker’s scale.
• The interview procedure yielded 80 pages of double-spaced text, after transcription.
• The interviews were analyzed using the constant comparative method.
• The first author created initial coding categories that reflected the consistency that emerged for each brand personality dimension.
• The most illuminatory exemplars of the themes were retained for the paper, and incorporated into the interpretation section and subsequent tables.

Consumer Perception of Brand Personality

• The study focuses on understanding how consumers associate brands with different dimensions of brand personality.

• Brands associated with sincerity are typically encountered in everyday life, such as those in the beverage, food, cosmetics, and supermarket product categories.

• Guarantees and personal selling contribute to the image of sincere brands as genuinely interested in their customers' well-being.

• Sincere brands are strongly associated with family and family-related activities, high morals, and positive experiences that meet or exceed expectations.

• Brands perceived as insincere often have unethical business practices, cheat consumers, or are too exclusive for the average person.

• Brands associated with competence are often market leaders, have a long history, and are staffed by highly qualified employees.

• Competent brands are perceived to be of high quality, and consumers report positive experiences while using them.

• Negative or positive product experience and the degree to which the product meets consumers' expectations are crucial factors for judging a brand's competence.

• Brands perceived as exciting are rooted in the car, beverage, and clothes categories, and often help consumers fulfill their aspirations to be perceived as more exciting in the eyes of their reference groups.

• Aesthetics play an important role in forming perceptions of brand personality, and exciting brands often offer consumers exciting experiences.

• The personality descriptors associated with a brand arise from the underlying usage situation and emotions or feelings evoked by the brand.

• Consumer perceptions of brand personality develop from product experiences in which performance expectations are met or exceeded, and competence associations seem to require repeated expectations of consistent performance over time.Consumer Perception of Exciting and Sophisticated Brands

• Exciting brands are associated with new experiences, warmer weather, and special occasions.

• The "halo effect" is when a brand is associated with exciting experiences, making the brand itself exciting.

• Exciting brands are used by exciting people, and user imagery plays a role in brand personality.

• Ads are a source of excitement for brands, often depicting young people having fun or engaging in exciting activities.

• Unexciting brands are often everyday products or those with a mundane image.

• Sophisticated brands are associated with high-end markets, designer clothes, and exclusive car brands.

• Aesthetics play a crucial role in perceptions of sophistication, with elegant simplicity often being a key characteristic.

• User imagery, including celebrity endorsements, is often used to convey brand personality and sophistication.

• Cosmetics brands are sometimes perceived as sophisticated, with femininity and beauty associations.

• Volvo is an example of a brand that has developed a feminine image for a new product aimed at women.

• Perception of sophistication is subjective and varies among consumers.

• Informants in the study mentioned a wide variety of brands in different product categories, making it difficult to summarize commonalities among unexciting or unsophisticated brands.

Consumer Perception of Brand Personality

• The study focuses on understanding how consumers associate brands with different dimensions of brand personality.

• Brands associated with sincerity are typically encountered in everyday life, such as those in the beverage, food, cosmetics, and supermarket product categories.

• Guarantees and personal selling contribute to the image of sincere brands as genuinely interested in their customers' well-being.

• Sincere brands are strongly associated with family and family-related activities, high morals, and positive experiences that meet or exceed expectations.

• Brands perceived as insincere often have unethical business practices, cheat consumers, or are too exclusive for the average person.

• Brands associated with competence are often market leaders, have a long history, and are staffed by highly qualified employees.

• Competent brands are perceived to be of high quality, and consumers report positive experiences while using them.

• Negative or positive product experience and the degree to which the product meets consumers' expectations are crucial factors for judging a brand's competence.

• Brands perceived as exciting are rooted in the car, beverage, and clothes categories, and often help consumers fulfill their aspirations to be perceived as more exciting in the eyes of their reference groups.

• Aesthetics play an important role in forming perceptions of brand personality, and exciting brands often offer consumers exciting experiences.

• The personality descriptors associated with a brand arise from the underlying usage situation and emotions or feelings evoked by the brand.

• Consumer perceptions of brand personality develop from product experiences in which performance expectations are met or exceeded, and competence associations seem to require repeated expectations of consistent performance over time.Consumer Perception of Exciting and Sophisticated Brands

• Exciting brands are associated with new experiences, warmer weather, and special occasions.

• The "halo effect" is when a brand is associated with exciting experiences, making the brand itself exciting.

• Exciting brands are used by exciting people, and user imagery plays a role in brand personality.

• Ads are a source of excitement for brands, often depicting young people having fun or engaging in exciting activities.

• Unexciting brands are often everyday products or those with a mundane image.

• Sophisticated brands are associated with high-end markets, designer clothes, and exclusive car brands.

• Aesthetics play a crucial role in perceptions of sophistication, with elegant simplicity often being a key characteristic.

• User imagery, including celebrity endorsements, is often used to convey brand personality and sophistication.

• Cosmetics brands are sometimes perceived as sophisticated, with femininity and beauty associations.

• Volvo is an example of a brand that has developed a feminine image for a new product aimed at women.

• Perception of sophistication is subjective and varies among consumers.

• Informants in the study mentioned a wide variety of brands in different product categories, making it difficult to summarize commonalities among unexciting or unsophisticated brands.

Consumer Perceptions of Brand Sophistication and Ruggedness

• Highly sophisticated brands are perceived as unique and exclusive, with elegant aesthetics that are used to impress others.
• Sophisticated brands are often perceived as feminine, but not exclusively.
• Unsophisticated brands are usually cheap, mass-produced, and of bad quality.
• Everyday use brands are also considered unsophisticated, even if they are of high quality.
• Masculine brands are perceived as unsophisticated because they lack a feminine touch.
• Ruggedness dimension is mostly represented by stereotypically masculine brands, such as Land Rover, Harley Davidson, Marlboro, and men's cosmetics and clothes.
• Land Rover is associated with outdoorsy, adventurous, and masculine people.
• Harley Davidson is considered a symbol of masculine culture and freedom.
• Brands used by celebrities are associated with elegance, beauty, and sophistication.
• Feminine brands are perceived as not rugged and are often associated with elegance, beauty, and charm.
• Family- and children-related brands are also perceived as not rugged.
• Rugged brands are associated with masculinity, while non-rugged brands are associated with femininity and family.

Consumer perceptions of brand personality dimensions and their implications for brand management

• Consumers associate different brand personality dimensions with specific product categories.
• Some product categories are over-represented among brands that consumers decidedly do not associate with a particular personality dimension.
• Product categories themselves possess a personality, and further investigation on the link between product category and personality is needed.
• Brands that consumers perceive as strong on respective personality dimensions share commonalities beyond just a product category.
• Brands which consumers perceive as lacking on a particular personality dimension also often share common attributes.
• Performance expectations are important in perceptions of two dimensions in particular: sincerity and competence.
• Company associations also carry over to perceptions of product brands.
• Consumer perceptions of the five brand personality dimensions are differentially related to brand benefits.
• Sincerity perceptions are associated with all three types of benefits: functional, experiential, and symbolic.
• Competence perceptions relate mainly to the functional benefits of brands (product quality) and the qualifications of employees.
• Perceptions of excitement relate to both symbolic and experiential benefits.
• The issue of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ brands could also be expanded within the study of brand personality.

Managerial Implications and Theoretical Contributions of Brand Personality

• Understanding consumer associations between brand personality dimensions and product categories can help brand managers develop tailored strategies to strengthen or downplay specific dimensions.
• Brand managers should consider product category personality-related considerations when planning brand extension strategies.
• Brands with strong personalities can be used as guidelines for product development and marketing campaigns.
• Perceptions of sincerity may operate as a points-of-parity (POPs) factor that develops from expectation-congruent brand performances.
• Perceptions of competence are relevant to functional brand benefits and can be strengthened by adding relevant associations about the competence of employees.
• In "credence" product categories, competence may play a major role in consumer judgments as a proxy for product quality.
• Aaker's brand personality scale was used for this research, but it has limitations, including being culture-specific and needing a higher level of abstraction in the hierarchical organization of personality characteristics.
• This study contributes to the literature by identifying which product categories are associated with different personality dimensions and establishing a link between consumers' performance expectations and perceptions of brand sincerity and competence.
• Company associations (e.g. moral values, position on the market, history, employees) influence consumers' perceptions of brand personality.
• Consumer perceptions of brand personality dimensions are related to functional and experiential benefits, in addition to symbolic brand benefits.
• The study suggests the need for a revision of the brand personality scale to account for the gender dimension and aesthetics and emotions connected to a brand.
• The findings encourage further study of brand personality characteristics and the construct of brand personality in general.