Files
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to better understand consumers perceptions and attitudes toward brands and brand personality. This study examines the determinants of brand selection to observe the role of brand personality and to examine the antecedents of brand personality to understand how this concept is formed and used. Further, this construct stems from consumers positive and negative views of their most and least favorite brands and their evaluations on brand personality traits. In this study, college students (N = 238) and mature (non-student) adults (N = 354) participated in the online survey, responding to questions based on evaluations of brands in the four different product categories (computer, soft drink, jeans, and shampoo). By using exploratory factor analysis, this study creates the 10 brand personality dimensions that consist of five positive dimensions (Accomplishment, Vitality, Contemporaries, Courageousness, and Stability), four negative dimensions (Bureaucracy, Superficiality, Unrefinedness, and Deceptiveness), and one neutral (male-oriented) dimension (Ruggedness). Importantly, in the relationships between consumers favorable brands and particular brand personality dimensions, demographic characteristics (i.e., gender and social group) play an important role in how consumers perceive and evaluate brands and their related personality traits. In terms of the 10 brand personality dimensions, females are more sensitive to brand personality traits than males in that female subjects are more likely to associate their most favorite brands with the positive dimensions and their least favorite brands with the negative ones than their male counterparts. Further, college students tend to think of brand personality more strongly than mature adults. Moreover, current research suggests that consumers tend to have more favorable attitudes toward brands based on brand personality dimensions when they consider buying self-expressive products. In the antecedents of brand personality, consumers tend to form brand personality through product-related attributes, price, brand name, product category associations, brands user imagery, and feelings toward ads.