دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی شخصیت برند: نظریه و ابعاد - امرالد 2018

Structured Abstract Purpose: To critique human personality as theory underpinning brand personality. To propose instead theory from human perception and, by doing so, to identify universally relevant dimensions. Design/Method: A review of published measures of brand personality, a re-analysis of two existing data bases and the analysis of one new database are used to argue and test for the dimensions derived from perception theory. Findings: Existing work on brand personality suggests 16 separate dimensions for the construct, but some appear common to most measures. When non-orthogonal rotation is used to re-analyse existing trait data on brand personality, three dimensions derived from signalling and associated theory can emerge: Sincerity (e.g. warm, friendly, agreeable), Competence (e.g. competent, effective, efficient) and Status (e.g. prestigious, elegant, sophisticated). The first two are common to most measures, status is not. Research Implications: Three dimensions derived from signalling and associated theory are proposed as generic, relevant to all contexts and cultures. They can be supplemented by context relevant dimensions. Practical Implications: Measures of these three dimensions should be included in all measures of brand personality. Originality: Prior work on brand personality has focussed on identifying apparently new dimensions for the construct. While most work is not theoretically based, some have argued for the relevance of human personality. That model is challenged and an alternative approach to both theory and analysis is proposed and successfully tested.

Discussion and Conclusions

The theoretical underpinning for Brand Personality

Brand personality has been criticised for a lack of theoretical underpinning (Austin, et al., 2003; Berens and van Riel, 2004). Scale development should ideally begin with a theoretically informed understanding of the construct to be measured (Churchill, 1979), and brand personality measures have been, in the main, derived without such underpinning. However human personality has been frequently cited as the theory most relevant to brand personality. We have challenged that view and identified a number of concerns, most notably that the individual dimensions of each construct with similar labels are far from similar in reality and that the Big 5 human personality framework in itself cannot be regarded as a theory, as it was derived from the data it is supposed to explain and is therefore not independent of what it is meant to explain.

Instead, we propose signalling theory (Spence, 1973; Connelly, et al., 2011) as more relevant because it explains how companies come to edit and shape their communication and to signal only specific aspects of a brand, because they find they work for them in the marketplace. Humans, as customers or employees, benefit from such signals as they can use them in constructing or maintaining their own self-image and in promoting that to others. The theory is also independent of the brand personality construct. Work within this perspective identifies a number of signals from companies to the market or between humans that reflect commonly identified, individual dimensions of brand personality including those we have labelled as Sincerity (Erdem and Swait, 1998; Wang, et al., 2004) and Competence (Spence 1973;Fombrun and Shanley, 1990; Griskevicius, 2007). However the same literature often emphasises the signalling of status (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003 Griskevicius, et al., 2007 Nelissen and Meijers, 2011) and while status is relevant to Aaker’s original definition of brand personality (the set of human characteristics associated with a brand) it was not clearly identified in early scale development work.