Brand Personality

Abstract: This paper aims at observing the issue of brand evaluation and at conducting a case study at Murfatlar S.A. The brand evaluation is a problem in the context of competition between brands to have their market share, recognition and reputation. Brands are fighting for a more privileged place in the consumer's mind. In this way, they can be sure that they will be chosen in the moment of buying. The objective of this research is to answer the question how customers rate the brands, and in particular to determine the coordinates of brand personality. Reviewing the literature I found that, often, between customers and brands closed relationships are established based on respect, trust, emotions, and resonance with the brand. The customers want to interact with the brands on the basis of the identified affinities. In this way, the brands have come to borrow from the human personality. To achieve the objective of the proposed research I have conducted a case study on a sample of 100 respondents, wine consumers, to assess the Murfatlar brand personality. I chose this brand because Murfatlar is the largest vineyard in Romania as cultivated area and also ranks first in wine consumption in our country, according to the market share. Murfatlar has a diverse portfolio that blends traditional brands with the new launched brands. The research results show that the new launched brands introduced in the company's portfolio have a more youthful, more exuberant personality being adapted to the young consumers segment, which focus on brand, fashion and quality when they buy a product. The Murfatlar traditional brands enjoy a more quiet and conservative personality. The practical implications of the study demonstrate the need to launch new brands and their proper positioning, to ensure the congruence with the changing needs of customers. The main achievements of the study refer to brand personality practical testing and to the need to incorporate this method of evaluation in the measurement analyses of the brand potential.

Brand Personality. The perceived personality traits of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, Instagram, and LinkedIn were measured using Aaker’s (1997) brand per- sonality traits. These scales measure the brand’s sinceri- ty, competence, sophistication, excitement, and rugged- ness. For each item, respondents indicated their level of agreement on a 7-point scale from (1) strongly disagree to (7) strongly agree. Sincerity assesses the how the brand was rated on beliefs that the site is honest, wholesome, cheerful, and down-to-Earth. Excitement assesses the how the brand was rated on beliefs that the site is daring, spir- ited, imaginative, and up-to-date. Competence assesses the how the brand was rated on beliefs that the site is reli- able, intelligent, and successful. Sophistication assesses the how the brand was rated on beliefs that the site is charming and upper class. Ruggedness assesses the how the brand was rated for masculinity, strength, and tough- ness. Several scales of differing lengths have been created to measure these brand personality traits.

Aaker started from Big-Five items, but completed them with, amongst other things, social- demographic characteristics (Geuens et al., 2009). Whereas Big-Five researchers deliberately exclude gender and social class (McCrae and Costa, 1997), Aaker (1997) includes the feminine, upper class, young, etc. in her scale. Other researchers adopted Aaker’s definition also prove that not all their items are real personality traits and came up with the items such as good-looking, healthy, old, new, heavy, and big (Sung and Tinkham, 2005), or cost-effective and financially stable (Venable et al., 2005). Besides the criticisms on “too wide and loose” definition, brand personality definition of Aaker still contains validity problems and leaves researchers and practitioners uncertain of what they actually measured: the perceived brand personality (a sender aspect) or perceived users characteristics (receiver aspects) (Geuens et al., 2009). Brand personality forms a major component of brand identity. Kapferer (2008) developed a brand identity prism that considers brand as a speech following from a sender to a receiver. Kapferer (2008) argues that the brand identity dimensions of physique (i.e., physical features, and qualities) and personality (i.e., human personality traits) picture the sender. The identity dimensions of reflection (i.e., image of the target group) and self-image (i.e., how the brand makes consumer feel) depict the receiver. The dimension of culture (i.e., values) and relationship (i.e., mode of conduct) from a bridge between the sender and receiver. Konecnik and Go (2008) prove that most researchers agree the opinion that brand identity (and brand personality) is best understood from the sender-side and brand image from the receiver-side perspective. For example, user imagery often is not often the same as brand personality (Keller, 2008). Plummer (2000) found that consumers perceive the stereotypical user of Oil of Olay as “a pretty, down-to-earth, solid, female citizen,” whereas the brand personality of Oil of Olay is more upscale and aspirational. Aaker’s scale mixes up sender and receiver aspects and embraces a mix of the different identity concepts. For instance, Aaker and Joachimsthaler (2012)’s model showed that the mixing up ‘the brand as a product’ with ‘the brand as a symbol.'

This study used descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and logistic regression. The descriptive statistics was used to analyze the demographic data of the respondents. CFA was used to test whether the measures of a construct are consistent with the researcher’s understanding of the nature of that construct or factor. The objective of CFA was to test whether the data fit the hypothesized model which is based on theory and previous analytical research. The study established whether most of the independent variables have significant influences on the dependent variable. Logistic regression was employed in the hypotheses of this thesis given that the outcome variables of brand personality was measured as a dichotomous/binary measure. According to Cochran's (2018) “logistic regression is a statistical method for analyzing a dataset in which there are one or more independent variables that determine an outcome and the outcome is measured with a dichotomous variable (in which there are only two possible outcomes)”. Therefore, this analysis was appropriate for examining the relationships.

Academics and managers alike continually seek improved explanations of why consumers prefer some brands over others. Since Sirgy’s (1982) seminal work on self-brand congruence, an enduring explanation has taken hold: consumers invest brands with human personality characteristics and are drawn to brands with characteristics that align with their own traits. In the burgeoning literature on brand personality, numerous empirical studies have found support for this premise. Nevertheless, almost all studies to date have been conducted using a simple, single measure of self-brand congruence: survey respondents rate on a Likert scale the extent to which they feel a named brand matches their own self-image, and the resulting scores are interpreted as direct indicators of the perceived degree of self-brand congruence. Although offering a basic measure, such approaches provide no insight into what exactly it is that consumers are aligning when they relate brands to their own self-image. Which specific personality traits, or groupings of traits, take precedence? Are some human and brand trait meanings more salient than others in alignment? If so, what forms do the correlations take? The aim of this study is to examine self-brand personality alignment at the level of individual traits, exploring which human and brand personality traits are meaningful to the alignment process and how they are inter-related. Not only should this approach contribute a more nuanced understanding of the processes of self-brand alignment, it may also help brand managers make more focused decisions. The paper begins by reviewing the literature relating to brand personality, self-brand congruence and trait alignment, and stating the key propositions tested in the fieldwork. The methods and results of the empirical study are then reported and discussed, including the study’s implications.

personality leads to the individual's satisfaction with their self-confidence. Finally, the third is the idea of social ideal self-concept where self- congruity causes customer satisfaction with their social approval (6). The concept of brand personality is well known subject in areas related to professional athletic clubs which can help teams increase supporters and attract sponsors (6). Nevertheless, this subjects still suffers from a research gap (8-10). Studies have shown that researchers of this field have been working to test the brand personality model, define scaling for it, examine the direct and indirect effects of the brand personality, the dynamics of its dimensions, and the use of brand personality in related fields. Some have also investigated its role in brand development (11). Meanwhile, the Iran Football league has weaknesses in most of these research areas (12). In this regard, we can refer to the studies of Shafaie et al., Asadollahi et al., and Tabatabaeian, Khabiri, and Rasouli (9, 12, 13). The results of exploratory and factor analysis of Shafaie et al. research from the viewpoint of the fans indicated that the dimensions of brand personality of the top league football teams form seven unique dimensions including perfection, stunning, distinctive, exciting, classic and successful (9). Asadollahi et al. also referred to seven factors in assessing the factors affecting sport’s brand personality of Iran clubs. These factors were symbolism, loyalty, originality, attractiveness, validity, excitement, emotions, where attractiveness, contrary to the "emotional" factor, is one of the most important factors (13). Indeed, these few studies which have been conducted so far have only determined or evaluated brand personality traits expressed only based on cross- sectional feelings of fans. Here, there may be mismatch between the image of the league and the perceptions of the fans. This formation must be realized by a systemic and guided process to pursue the major goals of Football league. Tabatabaeian, Khabiri, and Rasouli studied the strategies and outcomes of the formation process of the character of the Premier League, and the present study can be considered as a supplementary research for it (13).

Section C of the questionnaire was design to assess the perceived personality of the beverage brands. Total 15 questions were framed using Jennifer Aakers scale of measuring 15 different traits of brand personality. Respondent were asked to rate each of the beverage brands using four point scale ranging from 1 – Not at all descriptive(Matched) to 4 – Extremely descriptive on each trait. Further these fifteen traits were divided in to five dimensions of brand personality namely sincerity (down-to-earth, honest, wholesome and cheerful), excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative and up-to-date), competence (reliable, intelligent and successful), sophistication (upper class and charming), and ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough) identified by the Aaker. Reliability of the questionnaire was checked by conducting pilot study on ten respondents. The value of Cronbach’s α was above the acceptable range of 0.6 as mentioned in below table.

In particular, brand personality plays an important role in differentiating the brand image of a product from that of competing products and in creating a distinctive personal relationship with a consumer, and it is considered to be a core component of brand image (Aaker 1996; Keller, 1993). Brand personality can be defined as the personality traits that are used to design and communicate brand positioning and can be readily translated into appealing communication (Rekom, Jacobs, Verlegh, & Podnar, 2006). Thus, brand personality can be seen as the set of human characteristics associated with a brand (Aaker, 1997), which are connected to numerous other brand features in a consumer's memory (Freling & Forbes, 2005). Brand personality can have a significant influence on consumers' thoughts and behaviours and therefore can have strategic implications from the firm's perspective. Brand personality is an integral component of brand image and brand equity, and it has a function of differentiating a brand from its competing products. Blackston (1992; 2000) conceptualises the brand as a person with whom the consumer may choose to have a relationship. Thus, when consumers perceive brand personality traits to which they can relate, they may develop a personal relationship that is reflected as brand loyalty. In this case, a brand may be considered to be 'humanised' or 'anthropomorphised' to certain extent. A well-established brand personality influences consumer preferences and patronage (Malhotra, 1988; Sirgy, 1982) and fosters stronger emotional ties (Biel, 1993), trust and attachment between consumers and the brand (Fournier, 1998).

An understating of how students and external stakeholders of universities engage brands can enable the universities to create and communicate personalities that resonate the core values of the universities as well as their strengths. Harris (2009) postulated that, ‘...accounting for individual perceptions – and ultimately decision making –presents a real challenge when adapting branding strategies used for commodities ...’ (p. 25). In this view, it can be said that universities are faced with different set of challenges from branding themselves. The need for brands to be unique has been proposed in the literature (Watkins & Gonzenbach, 2013). Branding gives unique identification to firms and for that matter universities. One of the branding strategies that universities can use to distinguish themselves is brand personality. Brand personality has the potentials of creating and maintaining a strong relationship between universities and its stakeholders (Blackston, 1993). The aim of this study is to analyse the brand personality Universities in Ghana communicate on their websites.

The research of trust in the context of brands is based on the theory of brand personality (Belaid & Behi, 2011). The anthropomorphisation of brands implies that they possess certain personal characteristics and, as a result, we can trust a set of brands in the same way that we can trust some people (Aaker, 1997; Fournier, 1998). The concept of brand trust shows that the relationship between a consumer and a brand could go beyond satisfaction of functional performance (Belaid & Behi, 2011). In the brand domain, trust is a feeling of security held by the consumer that the brand will meet his/her consumption expectations. Brand trust transforms a positive transactional orientation toward a brand into an enduring, close, and personal – even committed – relationship with a brand. Entrenched relationships characterised by feelings of personal connection depend largely on trust. Morgan and Hunt (1994) theorised that trust is one component of consumers’ relationships with brands, and trust, along with commitment, is a key characteristic required for relationship marketing success. Inspired by previous literature, Delgado-Ballester (2004) conceptualized brand trust as ‘The confident expectations of the brand’s reliability and intentions in situations entailing risk to the consumer’ (p. 574). This definition of brand trust reflects two distinct components: brand reliability, which is based on the extent to which the consumer believes that the brand accomplishes its value promise, and brand intentions, which is based on the extent to which the consumer believes that the brand would hold consumers’ interests ahead of its self-interest when unexpected problems with the consumption of the product arise (Delgado-Ballester, 2004).

Brand personality for consumers and marketing is beneficial, because it can create a mechanism in order to differentiating and making difference between brands and acts as a key determinant for consumer use intention (Bruwer and Buller, 2005). In fact, when it is difficult to assess the product's features, consumers usually rely on brand personality (Büyükyavuz, 2008). Aaker (1997) knows the rand personality as human features describe that consumers ascribe to brands. She proposed a five-dimensional model for brand personality scale. Aaker (1997) brand personality scale has a 24 adjective and five dimensions inclusive ruggedness, sophistication, excitement, competence and sincerity that enumerated one of the most widely used instrument for measuring brand personality in different industries. However it is thought that the brand personality is one of the essential elements brand image that can help to building brand equity (Keller, 1993; Aaker, 1996). Brand equity is one of the most important marketing concepts which is nowadays widely discuss by researchers and experts marketing. An important reason for this reputation is important and strategic role of brand equity in management decisions and created the competitive advantage for the organizations and those customers (Atilgan et al., 2007)

Next to the influence of the type of experience and the environment on brand personality, brand attitude and brand activation, the usability of the archetypal model to measure brand personality was tested. The archetypal model, with famous individuals representing the archetypes, was used to measure the brand personality of Apple. According to the participants the brand Apple was rooted the strongest in three archetypes. The first and strongest archetype was Leonardo da Vinci as the ‘creator’. The description matching this archetype was: ‘He is creative and wants to create things of lasting value. He dares to look at the world in a different way and has a strong imagination. He also looks beyond the boundaries of today.’ The second archetype was Albert Einstein as the ‘sage’ with the following description: ‘He is inquisitive and intellectual. He does not settle for the world as he sees it, but wants to gain deeper understanding. He is always looking for information or data that reveals the truth.’ The third archetype was Christoffel Columbus as the ‘explorer’. The description matching this archetype was: ‘He is individual and independent. He has a strong need for freedom and adventure and goes his own way. He is curious and wants to discover new things.’ The personality traits in the descriptions of these archetypes match with the brand message that Apple communicates to consumers by means of marketing communications. This confirms that Apple succeeds in communicating the desirable brand personality to consumers and that the archetypal model is suitable for measuring brand personality.

simple to complete. He also suggests some generic guidelines such as not trying to get too many questions on the same page, or arrows and boxes and fancy font styles. Another useful tactic is that of using closed questions to save time and ease it for the respondents because they can be pre-coded. A Likert Scale is widely used in the questionnaire design that allows the respondents to rate a degree of their opinions toward the questions; for example, a 5 Likert Scale where 1 is strongly disagree and 5 is strongly agree (Bryman, 2012). Providing clear instructions about how to respond is very important in the questionnaire design, since the respondents need to complete the questionnaire by themselves. For instance, it is important to clearly state if the respondents can choose more than one answer (Bryman, 2012; Williams, 2003). The questionnaire for this research was designed in English and was translated into Lao by a translation company. In the questionnaire, English and Lao languages were presented on the same pages because some of the respondents were foreigners who work or live in Laos. The questionnaire for this research has three main parts, namely donor behaviours, charity brand personality and demographic details. Part one and part two use a seven-point Likert Scale that helps the respondents to answer questions easily and avoid boredom, due to the questionnaire containing many questions, especially the section on rating the trait items that consists of 38 characteristics. Part three was designed as multiple choice, which explores demographic information about Lao donors. This questionnaire survey was conducted with donors selected from the random process using the Lao Red Cross donors list.

Since the seminal work of Aaker (1997), this concept has received increasing attention among researchers and advertiser (Ferrandi et al , 2003; Ang and Lim, 2006; Vernette, 2008; Valette-Florence et al., 2009; Maehle et al., 2011; Merabet and Benhabib, 2012; Merabet, 2013; Borzooei and Asgari, 2013 ; etc.). A distinct, desirable and sustainable personality has become therefore an important objective in the context of brand management (Siguaw et al., 1999). As such, marketers need to define the brand personality carefully to be sure that consumers perceive their brand as expected (Burnett and Hutton, 2007). However, according to Plummer (1984), brand personality has two sides , the “input” corresponding to what we want consumers think and feel towards the brand and, the "output" which corresponds to the real feelings of consumers towards the brand. A gap between these two sides will have important consequences on the evaluation of the brand. It is therefore important to control the inference sources of brand personality features. Furthermore, the antecedent of this concept are insufficiently examined (Pantin - Sohier 2009), even in the Algerian context; hence the need for a real examination of this topic.

The study has shown that all the four (4) universities have branding strategies in their marketing communications. The findings are consistent with Rutter et al (2016) who established that, most universities used prospectus as the marketing communication and recruitment strategic tool. From the analysis, it can be concluded that 4 Universities understand brand personality and strategically communicate the brand personality they want prospective students and stakeholders to associate with. The study is also consistent with Opoku (2005) who concluded that Business Schools in South Africa portray the five-dimensional brand personality traits on their website. However, the study found additional descriptors that the universities use to portray these brand personalities. These descriptors are captured in tables 1 to 4. From the analysis and results, it can be concluded that the universities want their publics or students to perceive them as having teaching and research competence. However, a critical analysis of the KNUST Business website showed that they are very strategic in their marketing communications. They communicated many attributes which the other universities did not. Thus, KNUST Business School communicate their brand personality better than the others. The findings also show that, websites are strategic media for brand communication.

Previous study proves that there are abundance of research addressing the relationship between brand personality and brand loyalty (Zentes et al., 2008). The researchers expect that when the consumer can relate themselves to certain brand there are higher tendency for the consumer to be loyal to the brand (Guo, 2003). Based on previous research, there is a positive relationship between brand personality and brand loyalty (Ekinci and Hosany, 2006; Zentes et al., 2008). However, since Halal brand personality is still new, Ahmad (2015) suggested for the constructs to be investigated to explain consumer behavior through halal products traits to refine the concepts. Borzooei and Asgari (2013) argued that Halal brand were express through beliefs, features, interests and heritage which implies that Halal brand contains certain types of personality that appeal to the interest of their consumer. This type of personality also important in consumer’s decision making, purchase intention and maintaining strong relationship with a brand (Louis and Lombart, 2010). The integration of religion with brand personality will help to influence the devoted believers to stay loyal to their brand because devout consumer will strongly follow their religious principles and definitely it will impact their behavior in the market, level of confidence on a brand and most importantly their commitment or loyalty towards the brand (Khraim, 2011). In order to gauge a better understanding on the relationship between Halal brand personality and brand loyalty, it is necessary to discuss the relationship between each dimension with brand loyalty constructs.

As mentioned, brand personality increases the consumer's intention and interest as well as the level of their trust and loyalty (Aaker, 1997), and this is while brand loyalty which is an aspect of brand equity has been greatly affected by brand personality and brand preferences (Kim, Magnini & Singal, 2011; Valette-Florence, Guizani & Merunka, 2011). Some studies confirm the positive effect of brand personality on the brand equity (Stephanie, Aaron, Lay Peng & Jayne, 2011; Gonçalves Santos, 2013; Hakkak et al, 2015). Stephanie et al. (2011) in a study entitled "The Effect of Brand Personality and Congruity on Customer-based Brand Equity and Loyalty of Personal Computer Brands", confirmed the effect of brand personality on brand equity and showed that the emotional dimensions and competence in the brands of personal computers are very important. Moreover, Gonçalves Santos (2013) in his study entitled "Axe's Brand Personality and Equity, consumers' perspectives on the brand's personality and equity" showed that the characteristics of the brand personality have significant effects on customer-based brand equity, so that the dimensions of excitement, competence and sophistication have significant and positive correlation with the dimensions of perceived quality and brand awareness, and in the meantime, customer loyalty has a negative correlation with the dimensions of excitement and sophistication. Moreover, recent research from Hakkak et al. (2015) about using structural equation modelling techniques shown that customer's intention to use bank services is affected by the brand personality, whereas brand equity can increase this effect by having a positive mediating role. Therefore, such literature reflects this fact that organizations are aware of the importance of relations between brand personality and creating the brand equity and strongly apply it in their brand management strategies. Given that brands can influence on the customers' feeling in their purchase decision-making (Baumgarth, Bill & Mats, 2011). According to the mentioned literature and the relations among the variables, one can provide the subsequent hypotheses as follows. It should be mentioned that many studies already have examined the relations between research main variables, but there isn't a study examining them as a whole.

Thus, the element of color needs to be acknowledged as an effective tool in influencing and shaping consumers associations. But even though this impact of color is acknowledged, the research exploring this ability of color to affect consumers’ brand perceptions and particularly brand personality is limited. However, there are a few studies so far that took an initial step in this under-researched direction, that indicate an influence of color on brand personality. The study of Labrecque and Milne (2012) proposes color as a driver of brand personality and highlights a strong relationship between those variables. But the study findings are restricted because of the focus on the influence of color in the context of product design and brand logos on the five superior dimensions of brand personality (Labrecque & Milne, 2012). For further developing this approach to colors in branding, the starting point as proposed by Labrecque and Milne (2012) are previous studies on color associations. Amongst others, the research of Hanada (2017); Singh & Srivastava (2011), Hynes (2009) and Clarke & Costal (2008) suggest that bright colors such as yellow is associated with cheerfulness friendliness, and moreover excitement (Walters, Apter & Svebak, 1982 as cited in Labrecque & Milne, 2012). Furthermore, orange is proposed to be associated with excitement, liveliness, energy, extroversions, and sociability (Mahnke, 1996; Singh & Srivastava, 2011). The study of Labrecque and Milne (2012) additionally shows a partly positive relationship be- tween bright colors (yellow and orange) and excitement in the context of logos. But so far, the effect of color on the brand personality dimensions beyond the frame of a product design or logo as well as the effect on the particular personality traits are unclear. The above-mentioned study shows that color seems to be an effective CVI element in influencing brand personality perceptions, but these findings need to be generalized and therefore applied to other contexts as well as set in relation to other elements of the CVI in order to determine the relative strength of this effect.

Jennifer Aaker (1997) was one of the first to independently study the concept of brand personality and to argue that brands try to create their brand personality through a set of human characteristics associated with the brand. In this study, she developed a construct to measure brand personality through a validated scale, based on 42 different personality traits which resulted in the ‘Big Five’ human dimensions; Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication and Ruggedness. However, not all 42 personality traits are always relevant to brands in general. A key difficulty of the brand personality framework is that the intended areas of application were never clearly defined (Austin, Siguaw & Mattila, 2003). This could cause some basic traits, such as being friendly or unique, to be more often applicable to brand elements than others. In addition, some traits can have overlapping associations, especially when only using visual representations. For example, honest and sincere are traits that are often perceived as closely related. A brand should evoke a positive response, should be unique and recognizable (Iverson, 1997). Therefore one could suggest that the extreme characteristic traits of Aaker’s personality framework are most suitable for adding value to brand differentiation, as they are the most self-contained and unique.

Data collection method is constructed on the basis of research strategy with suggestion by experts’ opinion and based on literature reviews with remaining forty two (42) items of Aaker’s BPS, measured to discover appropriate to designate a city’s personality trait in the first phase. One hundred and twenty (120) items were used in phase one and seventy (70) items were used in phase two subsequently sorting with the factor analysis process. The study incorporated with quantitative research internationally, expert opinions and opinion leaders, more than 1000 respondents selected samples using a systematic sampling and cluster management staff. A sample of managers, executive officers and non-executive officers randomly selected from the Majlis Bandaraya Kuala Terengganu (MBKT) and Tourism Kuala Terengganu. The population of study is approximately 4,600 people. This statistic is based on data collecting provided by MBKT and Tourism Kuala Terengganu. A multiple regression analysis also uses to find out the appeals of brand personality for Malaysian city branding, while a Structural Equation Modelling using AMOS 21 was applied to improve a model fix on contributing factor of city brand dimensions and strengthen the brand personality.