Brand Personality

Content

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature review 2

2.1 Debate on the definition of brand personality 2

2.2 Debate on brand personality measure scales 3

2.2.1 Aaker’s five dimensions brand personality scale 3

2.1.2 Aaker’s scale VS. Geuens et al.’s scale 5

2.1.3 Aaker’s scale VS. other culture specified scales 7

2.3 Debate on building the appropriate brand personality 8

3. Conclusion and further discussion 10

Reference 12

1. Introduction

The concept brand personality, which refers to the idea of associating human personality to a brand, is said that it could boost consumer preference and usage and has a positive influence on consumer loyalty and levels of trust (Sirgy, 1982; Fournier, 1994). The importance of brand personality was recognized by both practitioners and researchers long before from both company’s and consumer’s perspective (Sirgy, 1982; Keller, 1993; Aaker, 1996; Kapferer, 1998).

On one hand, with the development of technology, products are easier and easier to be copied by competitors in a short time; therefore it is harder for companies to differentiate their products from other similar products. Researchers have found that brand personality can provide sustainable competitive advantage to companies (Aaker, 1996) and can also have a positive influence on brand equity (Biel, 1993; Keller, 1993; Aaker, 1996) because brand personality is relatively hard to copy compared with product function and product appearance. For example, Pepsi and Coca-Cola are similar to each other in terms of products attributes. Pepsi made a brand personality that is younger and energetic to make young people drink Pepsi to identify them from their parents who drink Coca-Cola. On the other hand, consumers nowadays want to identify themselves from each other too. Brand personality in this case helps them to express their actual selves (Belk, 1988), ideal selves (Malhotra, 1988) or any specific dimensions of themselves (Keller, 1993) by choosing brand...