Description
In practice, the personification of brands has happened frequently since celebrities started to endorse brands. The use of famous people and their personalities helps marketers position their brands, and can even seduce consumers who identify themselves with these stars.
Do brand personality scales really
measure brand personality?
Received (in revised form): 21st June, 2003
AUDREY AZOULAY
is a doctoral candidate at HEC Graduate School of Management (Paris).
JEAN-NOE¨L KAPFERER
is Professor of Marketing at HFC Graduate School of Management, researcher and consultant. He is the author
of more than 100 articles and nine books on communication and brand management, two of which have been
widely translated: ‘Strategic Brand Management’ and ‘Re-inventing the Brand’ both published by Kogan Page,
London.
Abstract
Since 1997, literature and research on the concept of brand personality have been flourishing, and
specific scales have gone into widespread use in academic circles, unchallenged on their validity.
Brand personality is certainly a key facet of a brand identity. As this paper will demonstrate,
however, the current scales of brand personality do not in fact measure brand personality, but
merge a number of dimensions of brand identity — personality being only one of them — which
need to be kept separate both on theoretical grounds and for practical use. Brand research and
theorising, as well as managerial practice, have nothing to gain from the present state of
unchallenged conceptual confusion.
INTRODUCTION
Audrey Azoulay
HEC (Paris), Graduate School of
Management, 78350
Jouy-en-Josas, France
Tel: ?33 1 39 67 72 54;
E-mail: [email protected];
[email protected]
In practice, the personification of
brands has happened frequently since
celebrities started to endorse brands.
The use of famous people and their
personalities helps marketers position
their brands, and can even seduce
consumers who identify themselves
with these stars. In other words,
consumers could perceive a congruence between their (ideal or actual)
perceived selves and that of the star,
and hence form an attraction to the
brand.1,2 Or, more simply, this personality endowment may merely give
the brand a meaning in the consumers’
eyes.3
Beyond this specific advertising
strategy, it has long been recognised
that brands could be said to have a
personality, as any person has a
personality. In any case, in focus groups
or in depth interviewing, con-
sumers have no difficulty answering
metaphorical questions such as: ‘suppose the brand is a person, what kind
of person would he/she be, with what
personality?’ In fact, consumers do
perceive brands as having personality
traits. Recent research has even shown
that medical doctors (generalists as well
as specialists) had no difficulty in
attributing personality traits to pharmaceutical brands; moreover, these
traits were actually significantly correlated to medical prescription itself.4
That is why brand personality may
have a role to play in the construction
and/or management of brands.
Since 1997, and the pioneering scale
of brand personality proposed by
Aaker,5 a new stream of research has
been born. This renewed interest in a
rather old concept (brand personality)
signals that the metaphor of brands as
people is held as increasingly more
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pertinent at a time when marketing stresses so much the importance of creating relationships with
brands. Most of the research papers on
brand personality are now based on
Aaker’s scale. As is frequently the case
with pioneer studies, they lead to a
bandwagon effect: a first wave of
research consists of replication studies
in the country of the first study. Then
a second wave assesses the external
validity of the scale in foreign countries
in order to evaluate the robustness of
the scale, its ability to support translations and intercultural uses. Meanwhile
the scale’s use becomes widespread and
goes unchallenged. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate
that the current scale of brand personality, which is gaining popularity in
academic marketing circles, does not in
fact measure brand personality, but
merges a number of dimensions of a
brand identity which need to be kept
separate both on theoretical grounds
and for practical use. Certainly brand
personality is a useful concept, but
brand identity has more facets than the
personality facet alone.
This paper argues that a stricter definition of brand personality is
needed to avoid the present state of
conceptual confusion in branding research, and to allow brand personality
to be a rich and more useful concept
with which to understand and manage
brands. One should recall that ‘personality’ and other concepts used in
marketing (such as ‘self’ or values)
derive from psychology, and should
therefore be defined and strictly described in relation to their definition in
psychology, although some adaptations
seem necessary.6
To better understand what brand
personality is, the roots and history
144
of brand personality are first briefly
reviewed. The existing definition and
measurements of brand personality and
of personality in psychology are then
examined for comparison purposes.
Finally, it is demonstrated that the
existing definition and measurement
methodology have led to the construction of scales that do not really measure
brand personality, but other unrelated
concepts.
BRAND PERSONALITY: HISTORY OF
THE CONCEPT IN MARKETING
Advertisers and marketing practitioners
have been the first ones to coin the
term ‘brand personality’, well before
the academics studied and accepted the
concept. As early as 1958, Martineau7
used the word to refer to the nonmaterial dimensions that make a store
special — its character. King8 writes
that ‘people choose their brands the
same way they choose their friends;
in addition to the skills and physical
characteristics, they simply like them as
people’. He goes on quoting research
from the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency indicating that consumers
do tend to attribute facets of personality to brands and talk fluently
about these facets. Plummer9 speaks of
Orangina soft drink as having a ‘sensuous’ personality.
In addition, motivation research
made popular the use of projective
techniques to capture these facets. For
instance, it has become commonplace
to make use of metaphors in focus
groups, where consumers are asked to
talk about a brand as if it was a person,
a movie star, an animal, and so on. As
early as 1982, Se´ guela,10 creative vicepresident of the RSCG advertising
agency, introduced the ‘star strategy’ as
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DO BRAND PERSONALITY SCALES REALLY MEASURE BRAND PERSONALITY?
the new mode of brand management for mature markets. In mature
markets, non-product-based features of
the brand start to have a greater
effect on consumers’ buying decisions, even though, in focus groups,
people speak of the product first for
rationalisation motives. Se´ guela recommended that all brands be described
along three facets: the physical one
(what does the product do and how
well does it perform?), the character
(brand personality facet) and the style
(executional elements for advertising and communication). Regarding
design and corporate identity, in 1978
Olins’ book ‘Corporate Personality’11
refers to the fact that design is not here
to describe a product, but to endow
either its brand or corporation with
values and non-material distinguishing
attributes.
In practice, these publications expressed a growing dissatisfaction with
an enduring tenet of marketing practice
equating the product and the brand;
that is, defining the brand by a
product’s performance. A typical example of that was the famous ‘unique
selling proposition’ (USP), the term
created by Rosser Reeves,12 the author
of ‘Reality in Advertising’ (1961), a
title which unveiled the vision of a
brand as a product with a plus.
In the late 1980s, realising that, with
a growing number of copies and the
abundance of similar products, it was
more and more difficult to differentiate
brands on the basis of performance, Ted
Bates — the advertising agency where
Rosser Reeves worked — introduced
an additional concept: the unique selling personality. As a consequence, in
the famous ‘copy strategy’ — the essential single sheet which summarises
the advertising strategy as related to
copy — it became widespread to see a
new item to be filled by account
executives: brand personality (as a substitute to the former item: tone of
advertising). In fact, this meant that
tone (an executional constant) would
not have to be invented, but derived
from the type of brand one wanted to
create, to build and to reinforce.
Starting in the 1970s, whatever the
client or its advertising agency, all
copy strategies included a provision
for describing brand personality, after
having stated the target, the brand
promise and the reason why. From this
it can be seen that the use of
‘brand personality’ originated as a
non-product-based definition of the
brand: it captured all that was not
bound to the product’s use, performance, benefits, attributes, and so on.
Interestingly, neither was it a description of the target itself, like when
one describes a brand by the lifestyle of its target. In copy strategies
brand personality was used as a common, practical, but rather loose, word
for assessing non-product-based, nonfunctional dimensions of the brand; it
captured the singularity of the source
of the product as if it were a person.
Later, on the research side, the brand
identity frameworks13–18 always quoted
brand personality as a dimension or a
facet of brand identity — namely those
traits of human personality that can be
attributed to the brand. Among other
dimensions are the brand inner values
(its cultural facet), the brand relationship facet (its style of behaviour, of
conduct), the brand-reflected consumer
facet, and the brand physical facet (its
material distinguishing traits).19,20 (See
Figure 1).
At odds with this general conceptualisation of personality as one part of
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Personality
Physical
facet
Culture
Relationship
(values)
Reflected
Consumer
consumer
mentalisation
Internalisation
Externalisation
Constructed source
Constructed receiver
Figure 1: Brand identity prism
Source: Kapferer (1992, 1998)
brand identity — namely referring to
the traits of human personality attributed to the brand — Aaker,21 in
the process of building a scale for
measurement purposes, defines brand
personality not as a part but as the
whole: ‘the set of human characteristics
associated to a brand’. However, inner
values, physical traits and pictures of
the typical user are also ‘human characteristics’ that can be associated with a
brand. Hence the risk (if one follows
this too-global definition) of muddling
conceptually and empirically distinct
brand identity facets within a single
scale of so-called ‘brand personality’.
This recent loose usage of the
concept of brand personality for scale
measurement purposes is, in fact, going
back to the historical early use by
pioneer professionals. They rightly felt
that the copy strategy did successfully
define the product’s compelling competitive advantage (USP), but failed to
capture the essence of the source of
that product (the brand). They coined
the term ‘brand personality’ to capture
all the non-product dimensions.
To come back to theoretical unity
146
and conceptual clarity, one should
follow Churchill’s measurement advice
to be ‘exacting in delineating what is
included in the definition and what is
excluded’.22 The current paper suggests
a clear and pure definition of the
concept of brand personality, separate
from the other human characteristics
which can be associated with a brand.
This definition should remain close
to that used in psychology, where
the concept of personality has been
analysed for decades, although it should
be adapted to brands.
PERSONALITY: CONCEPT AND
MEASUREMENT
In order to clarify the issues, the
concept of personality in psychology,
which is at the very basis of any work
on brand personality, will be examined.
The human personality concept in
psychology
Without going back to the Latin or
theological roots of the word ‘per-
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sonality’ — the meanings of which are
then manifold — the first psychologist
who constructed a personality theory
was Freud. Most important is that
Freud23 and his disciples considered
personality to be something dynamic,
cumulative, but, above all, they viewed
it as being durable and relatively stable
over time. The research of Sullivan24
follows the same lines, especially concerning the definition of personality.
Indeed, Sullivan thought that:
‘Personality could be defined only in terms
of the reactions . . . of an individual towards
other people in recurrent interpersonal situations in life. He called the smallest unit of
recurrent reactions dynamism. He used that
word to describe certain patterns of feelings
or behaviour . . . and also to describe entities
or mechanisms that are the components of
the personality . . . Those dynamisms are
quite enduring and accumulate throughout
life.’
This definition is quite vague, but it
gave way to the trait theory. The
importance of defining the concept of
personality is crucial insofar as it will
influence the theory that will ensue.
When trying to write a book devoted
to explaining what personality really
is, Allport25 wrote an entire chapter entitled ‘Defining personality’. In
this chapter, he reviewed 49 definitions before giving one of his own.
This book is a remarkable effort to
define this field of study. The definitions reviewed have common points
that can be found in Allport’s definition. The ‘Dictionnaire Fondamental
de la Psychologie’26 summarises this
research and these definitions:
‘[Personality is the] set of relatively stable
and general dynamic, emotional and affective characteristics of an individual’s way of
being, in his/her way to react to the situations in which s/he is.
In most cases, the word does not include
the cognitive aspects of the behavior (intelligence, abilities, knowledge). It always deals
with the affective, emotional and dynamic
aspects. Personality is [more often than not]
described in terms of traits.’
Personality is a clear construct different
from cognitive aspects of the person, or
from his or her skills and abilities. It is
described by traits.
The theory of traits is crucial to
personality theory insofar as it has
enabled the practical application of the
theory of personality, the construction
of personality scales, and the identification of the corpus of words that define
personality. As Allport27 described it, a
trait is ‘a generalized and focalized
neuropsychic system (peculiar to the
individual), with the capacity to render
many stimuli functionally equivalent,
and to initiate and guide consistent
(equivalent) forms of adaptive and
expressive behavior’. The researchers
in the 1930s to 1950s focused more on
the construction of an exhaustive and
representative list of all the terms of the
language that could possibly describe
the personality, than on the search
for a perfect definition of the concept. That research (including that of
Cattel28) is the basis of the current
popular personality theories. The study
of personality by a lexical approach
dates back to the 1920s in Germany
and the 1930s in the USA. It has since
been developed in various countries,
but the US and German studies remain
the central ones in the field.
The first exhaustive published list of
terms present in the English dictionary
related to personality and was prepared
by Allport and Odbert29 in 1936 (they
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listed 18,000 terms). Most studies following that of Cattel30 have converged
towards the conclusion that human
personality could be ‘summarised’ by a
small number of factors (from two to
16). A large number of studies have
reached the number five.31–40
The reduction in the number of
items has been made on the basis of a
relevancy criterion: the terms that have
been taken out are those which are
judged obscure, ambiguous or colloquial, and those that are judgmental or
that introduce a gender distinction. The
factors are the result of factor analysis,
most of the time with a varimax
rotation. As Digman41 explains in his
literature review, Goldberg42 too has
observed the robustness of the fivefactor model, independently of the
results of Cattel.43 He even thinks that
these five broad factors or dimensions
can form a framework within which to
organise and structure the personality
concept as it has been studied by
researchers such as Cattel,44 Norman,45
Eysenck,46 Guilford47 and Wiggins.48
The five dimensions reflect an individual’s stable and recurrent traits, as
opposed to temporary states that are not
taken into consideration in the description of an individual personality.
Goldberg’s results are supported by
another piece of research, which
analyses six studies, and shows the
robustness of the model unveiled by
Tupes and Christal,49 with five factors
labelled the ‘Big Five’ by Goldberg.
The number of dimensions is,
however, not confirmed by all
researchers. Some of them indeed note
that the parsimonious configuration of
the Big Five model has weaknesses (see
Eysenck50 for example).
Despite critiques, the Big Five
theory or five-factor model is widely
148
accepted. The five dimensions are
often (but not always) labelled
OCEAN:
— Dimension O: Openness to new experiences, to imagination and intellectual curiosity. This dimension
gathers such elements as the intensity, span and complexity of an
individual’s experiences.
— Dimension C: Conscientiousness.
This dimension gathers such traits
as scrupulousness, orderliness and
trustworthiness.
— Dimension E: Extraversion. This
dimension gathers such traits as
openness to others, sociability, impulsivity and likeability to feel
positive emotions.
— Dimension A: Agreeableness. This
dimension includes such traits
as kindness, modesty, trust and
altruism.
— Dimension N: Neuroticism. An individual is said to be neurotic if
they are not emotionally stable.
This dimension includes such traits
as anxiety, instability and nervousness.
Some researchers have shown that
each of the five dimensions could
be represented by a small number
of adjectives that are representative
enough of the dimension they load on.
In other words, these adjectives have a
high loading on one dimension and a
low (or close to 0) loading on
other dimensions. These adjectives are
named ‘markers’ of the Big Five
(Goldberg,51 Saucier52). They have
been developed to reduce the length of
questionnaires and to avoid respondents’ fatigue. This method enables a
psychologist to form a quick evaluation
of an individual. Saucier’s53 40 mini-
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Table 1 Aaker’s brand personality scale and the psychological five factors model
Authors
Dimensions
Facets (**) or items (***)
Aaker
Sincerity
Excitement
Competence
Sophistication
Ruggedness
(**) Down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, cheerful
Daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date
Reliable, intelligent, successful
Upper-class, charming
Outdoorsy, tough
Saucier’s 40
mini-markers
Openness (or intellect)
(***) Creative, imaginative, intellectual, philosophical, deep,
complex, uncreative, unintellectual
Efficient, organised, systematic, practical, disorganised,
inefficient, sloppy, careless
Bold, extraverted, talkative, bashful, quiet, shy, withdrawn,
energetic
Kind, sympathetic, warm, cooperative, cold, unsympathetic,
harsh, rude
Unenvious, relaxed, fretful, envious, jealous, moody, touchy,
temperamental
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
(or Emotional Stability)
markers are presented in Table 1, along
with Aaker’s five-dimensional scale.54
Psychology applied to the brand
personality concept
The methodology that led to the
five-factor model has been directly
borrowed, and sometimes somehow
adapted, by some marketing researchers (Caprara et al.,55 Ferrandi and
Valette-Florence56). Thus if brands,
like individuals, can be described
with adjectives, the approach used in
psychology can be very interesting and
relevant to account for a brand personality as perceived by consumers.
Indeed, the personality of individuals is
perceived through their behaviour,
and, in exactly the same way, consumers can attribute a personality to
a brand according to its perceived
communication and ‘behaviours’. The
question is whether the terms that
encode personality in language can be
applied to brands. The existing literature about the relationship between an
individual and a brand (Plummer,57
Fournier58), about brand attachment or
even about the view of a brand as a
partner (Aaker et al.59), enables one to
think that, since brands can be personified, human personality descriptors
can be used to describe them. In fact,
the adjectives used to describe human
personality may not all be relevant to
brands. This is where an adaptation is
required. Some psychological aspects of
humans such as neurotic fatigue, for
example, may not be applicable to
brands. This need for adaptation has
also been suggested by Aaker60 and
Caprara et al.61
Brand personality measurement
Aaker’s62 work has tried to clarify the
concept and build a scale to measure it.
To achieve this, she largely followed
the psychologists’ steps in their study
of human personality. She followed
more particularly the studies made
by researchers who contributed to
the identification of five dimensions
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subsuming personality (the five-factor
model). More specifically, Aaker, and
those who replicated or followed her
work (Ferrandi et al.,63 Koebel and
Ladwein,64 Aaker et al.65), are walking
in the steps of the US psychologists,
Costa and McCrae, who adopted a
lexical approach, and whose personality inventory (NEO-PI-R66,67) is
renowned and has been translated into
several languages (see Rolland68 in
French, for example).
Most recent works on brand personality research are based on Aaker’s
global definition of the concept of
brand personality as ‘the set of human
characteristics associated to a brand’.69
Aaker explored brand personality on
the basis of 114 adjectives (or traits)
across 37 brands that cover various
product categories. She reached a fivefactor solution presented in Table 1.
Only three out of those five factors
correspond to elements of the fivefactor model in psychology.
ARE CURRENT BRAND PERSONALITY
SCALES VALID?
The issue of concept validity
So far, most of the research on brand
personality has focused on external
validity: scores of translations have
been undertaken by local researchers to
assess the ability of the scale to produce
its similar five factors in different
markets and cultures. The main issue
has not yet been addressed. It is not
because one calls it a ‘brand personality scale’ that it does actually
measure personality. This issue refers to
a critique of construct or concept
validity.
As seen above, Aaker defines
personality as being ‘the set of
150
human characteristics associated with a
brand’.70 This definition comes directly
from practitioners’ early use of brand
personality as a single all-encompassing
convenient item in the advertising
copy strategy to define all that is not
product related. Thus, from the start,
although the word ‘personality’ has a
very specific meaning in psychology, its
use in branding has tended to be rather
loose — an all-encompassing pot
pourri. The problem is that all the
work subsequent to Aaker’s was based
implicitly or explicitly on this
definition. Therefore, all these studies
share the same flaw in their conceptual
basis.
The main problem with the current
definition is that it is too wide — it
may embrace concepts beyond those of
brand personality. Marketing is an
applied science that sometimes imports
existing concepts from psychology and
other areas. The concept of personality
has been coined by psychology, and
maybe it would be more precise to
remain close to the psychological
definition of personality. Indeed, by
loosely defining ‘brand personality’, it
may mean almost everything related to
a human being and applied to brands.
Whereas psychologists have worked
over the years to exclude intellectual
abilities, gender and social class from
their personality definitions and scales,
adopting Aaker’s loose definition of
brand personality may mean that their
results are ignored, and the term ‘brand
personality’ is used to designate ‘any
non-physical attribute associated with a
brand’, including intellectual abilities,
gender or social class.
If Allport71 dedicated a whole chapter (as in most theoretical handbooks
dedicated to the study of personality)
to concept definition and to the
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problems related to it, it is because the
step of definition of the concept is
tricky and very long. He examined
a large number of definitions and
rejected them because he found them
too vague or incomplete (hence meaningless). He then proposed a definition
of his own.
Without claiming to solve the
debate among psychologists concerning
the definition of personality, it is
possible to delineate quite precisely
what is included in, and what is
excluded from, the concept of personality in psychology and would be
advisable to do this in marketing for
the brand personality concept. In order
to move forward, one should stick to
the commonly agreed definition, summarised in the ‘Dictionnaire Fondamental de la Psychologie’.72 This
definition covers what is most widely
accepted among researchers, and was
presented above. The authors recommend that marketing researchers and
practitioners adopt a stricter definition
of the concept of brand personality in
order to reach a more exact measurement of that concept. The definition
proposed is: ‘brand personality is the set
of human personality traits that are both
applicable to and relevant for brands’. A
stricter definition means a definition
that enables a delineation of what is
included in and what is excluded
from the concept, as suggested by
Churchill.73
The main problematic items of the
scale
The current scale of so-called ‘brand
personality’ encompasses dimensions
conceptually distinct from the pure
concept of personality. The items in
the scale will now be analysed.
The item ‘competence’
Aaker’s scale holds ‘competence’ as
a major factor or trait among the
five identified. Competence refers to a
know-how (in the case of brands), or
to an ability to carry out something
properly. The definition of personality
in psychology does, however, exclude
any item related to abilities or cognitive capacities. Most psychologists exclude intelligence — as a cognitive
ability — from their personality tests.
Note that the adjectives ‘productive’, ‘well-organised’ and ‘(intellectually) efficient’ are descriptors of
personality (McCrae and Costa74), but
they do not relate to cognitive ability.
These items are applicable to brands,
but not in the framework of brand
personality: they are relevant to fields
such as organisation studies, control
of organisations or strategy. These
items are therefore applicable but not
relevant. This point cannot be made if
there is no strict prior definition of the
brand personality concept as suggested
in this paper.
The item ‘feminine’
For the item-generation step, Aaker
added some items related to gender,
social class and age. She bears out her
choice by quoting Levy who wrote:
‘researchers argue that brand personality includes demographic characteristics such as gender [which may be
all the more true in the languages
wherein there is a neutral pronoun to
talk about inanimates]. . ., age. . ., and
class’.75 By following this advice, one
confounds the personality of the brand
itself (source of the product) and the
personality of the purported receiver or
target, as portrayed in the brand’s
advertising. Another problem is that
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the item ‘feminine’ is a facet of Aaker’s
model, although gender is absent
from psychology scales of personality.
In addition, more often than not,
‘feminine’ is a value judgment. Its
meaning is tied to the culture.
The items related to social class
The authors think that to integrate
items related to age and social class is
also problematic. Indeed, if Levy76 talks
about age and social class, he never
explicitly says that they are relevant to
brand personality. He simply explains
that those items are part of the imagery
associated with typical users of the
brand (user imagery). He states that
an age and a social status could be
imbued to a brand through its typical
users. This argument is significant of
a conceptual lack of distinction between the personality of the brand (the
sender) and the person to whom the
brand seems to be speaking, the person
who is being addressed (the receiver)
(Kapferer77,78). Merging both dimensions introduces confusion and hinders
proper brand diagnosis and implementation. These arguments support the
authors’ belief that without a strict
definition of the concept, and without
the methodological stage of evaluation
of items, the measurement of brand
personality may become a ‘ragbag’.
Some other questionable items
Some authors (Davies et al.79) have
tried to replicate Aaker’s study in the
UK. In their replication, they found
that the items ‘Western’, ‘small town’
and ‘feminine’ accounted a lot for the
low reliability scores of their study.
The relevancy of these items in the
framework of personality is ques152
tionable. The presence of ‘Western’ is
a typical illustration of ethnocentrism
in marketing research. Why are the
equivalent terms ‘Asian’ or ‘Latin’
absent? Are the brands of the world
either Western or not?
Most importantly, the concept refers
to the value system underneath the
brand — what Kapferer80,81 calls its
‘cultural underpinnings, its cultural
facet’ in the brand identity prism (see
Figure 1). The brand identity prism
captures the key facets of a brand’s
identity: brand personality stricto sensu,
as defined above, is just one of these.
The flaws of the scale stem from its
conceptual definition
The weaknesses of the current scale of
brand personality derive from its construction methodology, itself embedded
in the flawed concept definition.
For item generation, in order to be
as exhaustive as possible and not to
forget any item, Aaker82 generated 309
items from four sources. The first three
were:
— literature review of scales used in
psychology to measure personality
— personality scales used by marketers
(academicians and practitioners)
— items generated by qualitative
studies.
These three sources were then completed by:
— a free association task performed
by respondents who were asked
to elicit personality traits that they
would associate with some brands.
The problem stems from the sources
that generated the items. As mentioned
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DO BRAND PERSONALITY SCALES REALLY MEASURE BRAND PERSONALITY?
before, early practitioners took the
concept of brand personality to have a
global, extended meaning. In this way,
the concept covers a variety of separate
constructs: the personality itself, but
also the values, the reflection of the
typical or stereotypical buyer, and so
on — all different facets of brand
identity. As a consequence, many items
of the so-called brand personality scale
are in fact measuring classical dimensions of product performance. Recent
empirical research by Romaniuk and
Ehrenberg83 demonstrates this point:
the authors analysed the average trait
attributions of Aaker’s scale across 12
markets and 118 brands. The brands
most associated with the so-called
brand personality item ‘energetic’ are
energiser drinks; the item ‘sensuous’ is
most associated with ice cream brands;
and ‘up to date’ is attributed most to
computers and electronic equipment.
included in the definition, and what is
excluded . . . Researchers should have
good reasons for proposing additional
new measures given the many available
for most marketing constructs of interest’. That is why this paper has tried to
analyse in detail both the shortcomings
of the existing definition and the
existing scales’ ability to measure the
concept of brand personality before
proposing a new methodology.
The present so-called brand personality scale merges all the human
characteristics applicable to brands under one blanket word — ‘personality’
— thus losing the distinctiveness of the
facets of brand identity; personality
being only one of them. It is time
to restrict the use of the concept of
brand personality to the meaning it
should never have lost: ‘the unique set
of human personality traits both applicable and relevant to brands’.
CONCLUSION
Acknowledgment
As demonstrated in this paper, the
existing measures for the construct of
brand personality do not measure that
construct, and introduce conceptual
confusion. They measure instead other
classical facets of brand identity, even
perceived product performance; recent
empirical research has reinforced this
conclusion. It seems that prior to the
construction of a valid measurement of
the construct of brand personality,
there must be a strict definition of the
construct, as well as the clarifying of
the conceptual difference between this
concept and the closely related ones.
As Churchill84 wrote, one should
always be aware that ‘the first in the
suggested procedure for developing
better measures involves specifying the
domain of the construct . . . what is
This paper has received the support of
Foundation HEC.
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Churchill, ref. 22 above.
McCrae, R. and Costa, P. T. (1985)
‘Updating Norman’s ‘‘adequate taxonomy’’:
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Kapferer, ref. 14 above.
Davies, G., Chun, R. and Vinhas da Silva,
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a measurement approach for corporate
reputation’, Corporate Reputation Review, Vol.
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Romaniuk, J. and Ehrenberg, A. (2003)
‘Do brands lack personality?’, Marketing
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Churchill, ref. 22 above.
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doc_440925758.pdf
In practice, the personification of brands has happened frequently since celebrities started to endorse brands. The use of famous people and their personalities helps marketers position their brands, and can even seduce consumers who identify themselves with these stars.
Do brand personality scales really
measure brand personality?
Received (in revised form): 21st June, 2003
AUDREY AZOULAY
is a doctoral candidate at HEC Graduate School of Management (Paris).
JEAN-NOE¨L KAPFERER
is Professor of Marketing at HFC Graduate School of Management, researcher and consultant. He is the author
of more than 100 articles and nine books on communication and brand management, two of which have been
widely translated: ‘Strategic Brand Management’ and ‘Re-inventing the Brand’ both published by Kogan Page,
London.
Abstract
Since 1997, literature and research on the concept of brand personality have been flourishing, and
specific scales have gone into widespread use in academic circles, unchallenged on their validity.
Brand personality is certainly a key facet of a brand identity. As this paper will demonstrate,
however, the current scales of brand personality do not in fact measure brand personality, but
merge a number of dimensions of brand identity — personality being only one of them — which
need to be kept separate both on theoretical grounds and for practical use. Brand research and
theorising, as well as managerial practice, have nothing to gain from the present state of
unchallenged conceptual confusion.
INTRODUCTION
Audrey Azoulay
HEC (Paris), Graduate School of
Management, 78350
Jouy-en-Josas, France
Tel: ?33 1 39 67 72 54;
E-mail: [email protected];
[email protected]
In practice, the personification of
brands has happened frequently since
celebrities started to endorse brands.
The use of famous people and their
personalities helps marketers position
their brands, and can even seduce
consumers who identify themselves
with these stars. In other words,
consumers could perceive a congruence between their (ideal or actual)
perceived selves and that of the star,
and hence form an attraction to the
brand.1,2 Or, more simply, this personality endowment may merely give
the brand a meaning in the consumers’
eyes.3
Beyond this specific advertising
strategy, it has long been recognised
that brands could be said to have a
personality, as any person has a
personality. In any case, in focus groups
or in depth interviewing, con-
sumers have no difficulty answering
metaphorical questions such as: ‘suppose the brand is a person, what kind
of person would he/she be, with what
personality?’ In fact, consumers do
perceive brands as having personality
traits. Recent research has even shown
that medical doctors (generalists as well
as specialists) had no difficulty in
attributing personality traits to pharmaceutical brands; moreover, these
traits were actually significantly correlated to medical prescription itself.4
That is why brand personality may
have a role to play in the construction
and/or management of brands.
Since 1997, and the pioneering scale
of brand personality proposed by
Aaker,5 a new stream of research has
been born. This renewed interest in a
rather old concept (brand personality)
signals that the metaphor of brands as
people is held as increasingly more
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AZOULAY AND KAPFERER
pertinent at a time when marketing stresses so much the importance of creating relationships with
brands. Most of the research papers on
brand personality are now based on
Aaker’s scale. As is frequently the case
with pioneer studies, they lead to a
bandwagon effect: a first wave of
research consists of replication studies
in the country of the first study. Then
a second wave assesses the external
validity of the scale in foreign countries
in order to evaluate the robustness of
the scale, its ability to support translations and intercultural uses. Meanwhile
the scale’s use becomes widespread and
goes unchallenged. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate
that the current scale of brand personality, which is gaining popularity in
academic marketing circles, does not in
fact measure brand personality, but
merges a number of dimensions of a
brand identity which need to be kept
separate both on theoretical grounds
and for practical use. Certainly brand
personality is a useful concept, but
brand identity has more facets than the
personality facet alone.
This paper argues that a stricter definition of brand personality is
needed to avoid the present state of
conceptual confusion in branding research, and to allow brand personality
to be a rich and more useful concept
with which to understand and manage
brands. One should recall that ‘personality’ and other concepts used in
marketing (such as ‘self’ or values)
derive from psychology, and should
therefore be defined and strictly described in relation to their definition in
psychology, although some adaptations
seem necessary.6
To better understand what brand
personality is, the roots and history
144
of brand personality are first briefly
reviewed. The existing definition and
measurements of brand personality and
of personality in psychology are then
examined for comparison purposes.
Finally, it is demonstrated that the
existing definition and measurement
methodology have led to the construction of scales that do not really measure
brand personality, but other unrelated
concepts.
BRAND PERSONALITY: HISTORY OF
THE CONCEPT IN MARKETING
Advertisers and marketing practitioners
have been the first ones to coin the
term ‘brand personality’, well before
the academics studied and accepted the
concept. As early as 1958, Martineau7
used the word to refer to the nonmaterial dimensions that make a store
special — its character. King8 writes
that ‘people choose their brands the
same way they choose their friends;
in addition to the skills and physical
characteristics, they simply like them as
people’. He goes on quoting research
from the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency indicating that consumers
do tend to attribute facets of personality to brands and talk fluently
about these facets. Plummer9 speaks of
Orangina soft drink as having a ‘sensuous’ personality.
In addition, motivation research
made popular the use of projective
techniques to capture these facets. For
instance, it has become commonplace
to make use of metaphors in focus
groups, where consumers are asked to
talk about a brand as if it was a person,
a movie star, an animal, and so on. As
early as 1982, Se´ guela,10 creative vicepresident of the RSCG advertising
agency, introduced the ‘star strategy’ as
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DO BRAND PERSONALITY SCALES REALLY MEASURE BRAND PERSONALITY?
the new mode of brand management for mature markets. In mature
markets, non-product-based features of
the brand start to have a greater
effect on consumers’ buying decisions, even though, in focus groups,
people speak of the product first for
rationalisation motives. Se´ guela recommended that all brands be described
along three facets: the physical one
(what does the product do and how
well does it perform?), the character
(brand personality facet) and the style
(executional elements for advertising and communication). Regarding
design and corporate identity, in 1978
Olins’ book ‘Corporate Personality’11
refers to the fact that design is not here
to describe a product, but to endow
either its brand or corporation with
values and non-material distinguishing
attributes.
In practice, these publications expressed a growing dissatisfaction with
an enduring tenet of marketing practice
equating the product and the brand;
that is, defining the brand by a
product’s performance. A typical example of that was the famous ‘unique
selling proposition’ (USP), the term
created by Rosser Reeves,12 the author
of ‘Reality in Advertising’ (1961), a
title which unveiled the vision of a
brand as a product with a plus.
In the late 1980s, realising that, with
a growing number of copies and the
abundance of similar products, it was
more and more difficult to differentiate
brands on the basis of performance, Ted
Bates — the advertising agency where
Rosser Reeves worked — introduced
an additional concept: the unique selling personality. As a consequence, in
the famous ‘copy strategy’ — the essential single sheet which summarises
the advertising strategy as related to
copy — it became widespread to see a
new item to be filled by account
executives: brand personality (as a substitute to the former item: tone of
advertising). In fact, this meant that
tone (an executional constant) would
not have to be invented, but derived
from the type of brand one wanted to
create, to build and to reinforce.
Starting in the 1970s, whatever the
client or its advertising agency, all
copy strategies included a provision
for describing brand personality, after
having stated the target, the brand
promise and the reason why. From this
it can be seen that the use of
‘brand personality’ originated as a
non-product-based definition of the
brand: it captured all that was not
bound to the product’s use, performance, benefits, attributes, and so on.
Interestingly, neither was it a description of the target itself, like when
one describes a brand by the lifestyle of its target. In copy strategies
brand personality was used as a common, practical, but rather loose, word
for assessing non-product-based, nonfunctional dimensions of the brand; it
captured the singularity of the source
of the product as if it were a person.
Later, on the research side, the brand
identity frameworks13–18 always quoted
brand personality as a dimension or a
facet of brand identity — namely those
traits of human personality that can be
attributed to the brand. Among other
dimensions are the brand inner values
(its cultural facet), the brand relationship facet (its style of behaviour, of
conduct), the brand-reflected consumer
facet, and the brand physical facet (its
material distinguishing traits).19,20 (See
Figure 1).
At odds with this general conceptualisation of personality as one part of
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Personality
Physical
facet
Culture
Relationship
(values)
Reflected
Consumer
consumer
mentalisation
Internalisation
Externalisation
Constructed source
Constructed receiver
Figure 1: Brand identity prism
Source: Kapferer (1992, 1998)
brand identity — namely referring to
the traits of human personality attributed to the brand — Aaker,21 in
the process of building a scale for
measurement purposes, defines brand
personality not as a part but as the
whole: ‘the set of human characteristics
associated to a brand’. However, inner
values, physical traits and pictures of
the typical user are also ‘human characteristics’ that can be associated with a
brand. Hence the risk (if one follows
this too-global definition) of muddling
conceptually and empirically distinct
brand identity facets within a single
scale of so-called ‘brand personality’.
This recent loose usage of the
concept of brand personality for scale
measurement purposes is, in fact, going
back to the historical early use by
pioneer professionals. They rightly felt
that the copy strategy did successfully
define the product’s compelling competitive advantage (USP), but failed to
capture the essence of the source of
that product (the brand). They coined
the term ‘brand personality’ to capture
all the non-product dimensions.
To come back to theoretical unity
146
and conceptual clarity, one should
follow Churchill’s measurement advice
to be ‘exacting in delineating what is
included in the definition and what is
excluded’.22 The current paper suggests
a clear and pure definition of the
concept of brand personality, separate
from the other human characteristics
which can be associated with a brand.
This definition should remain close
to that used in psychology, where
the concept of personality has been
analysed for decades, although it should
be adapted to brands.
PERSONALITY: CONCEPT AND
MEASUREMENT
In order to clarify the issues, the
concept of personality in psychology,
which is at the very basis of any work
on brand personality, will be examined.
The human personality concept in
psychology
Without going back to the Latin or
theological roots of the word ‘per-
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DO BRAND PERSONALITY SCALES REALLY MEASURE BRAND PERSONALITY?
sonality’ — the meanings of which are
then manifold — the first psychologist
who constructed a personality theory
was Freud. Most important is that
Freud23 and his disciples considered
personality to be something dynamic,
cumulative, but, above all, they viewed
it as being durable and relatively stable
over time. The research of Sullivan24
follows the same lines, especially concerning the definition of personality.
Indeed, Sullivan thought that:
‘Personality could be defined only in terms
of the reactions . . . of an individual towards
other people in recurrent interpersonal situations in life. He called the smallest unit of
recurrent reactions dynamism. He used that
word to describe certain patterns of feelings
or behaviour . . . and also to describe entities
or mechanisms that are the components of
the personality . . . Those dynamisms are
quite enduring and accumulate throughout
life.’
This definition is quite vague, but it
gave way to the trait theory. The
importance of defining the concept of
personality is crucial insofar as it will
influence the theory that will ensue.
When trying to write a book devoted
to explaining what personality really
is, Allport25 wrote an entire chapter entitled ‘Defining personality’. In
this chapter, he reviewed 49 definitions before giving one of his own.
This book is a remarkable effort to
define this field of study. The definitions reviewed have common points
that can be found in Allport’s definition. The ‘Dictionnaire Fondamental
de la Psychologie’26 summarises this
research and these definitions:
‘[Personality is the] set of relatively stable
and general dynamic, emotional and affective characteristics of an individual’s way of
being, in his/her way to react to the situations in which s/he is.
In most cases, the word does not include
the cognitive aspects of the behavior (intelligence, abilities, knowledge). It always deals
with the affective, emotional and dynamic
aspects. Personality is [more often than not]
described in terms of traits.’
Personality is a clear construct different
from cognitive aspects of the person, or
from his or her skills and abilities. It is
described by traits.
The theory of traits is crucial to
personality theory insofar as it has
enabled the practical application of the
theory of personality, the construction
of personality scales, and the identification of the corpus of words that define
personality. As Allport27 described it, a
trait is ‘a generalized and focalized
neuropsychic system (peculiar to the
individual), with the capacity to render
many stimuli functionally equivalent,
and to initiate and guide consistent
(equivalent) forms of adaptive and
expressive behavior’. The researchers
in the 1930s to 1950s focused more on
the construction of an exhaustive and
representative list of all the terms of the
language that could possibly describe
the personality, than on the search
for a perfect definition of the concept. That research (including that of
Cattel28) is the basis of the current
popular personality theories. The study
of personality by a lexical approach
dates back to the 1920s in Germany
and the 1930s in the USA. It has since
been developed in various countries,
but the US and German studies remain
the central ones in the field.
The first exhaustive published list of
terms present in the English dictionary
related to personality and was prepared
by Allport and Odbert29 in 1936 (they
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AZOULAY AND KAPFERER
listed 18,000 terms). Most studies following that of Cattel30 have converged
towards the conclusion that human
personality could be ‘summarised’ by a
small number of factors (from two to
16). A large number of studies have
reached the number five.31–40
The reduction in the number of
items has been made on the basis of a
relevancy criterion: the terms that have
been taken out are those which are
judged obscure, ambiguous or colloquial, and those that are judgmental or
that introduce a gender distinction. The
factors are the result of factor analysis,
most of the time with a varimax
rotation. As Digman41 explains in his
literature review, Goldberg42 too has
observed the robustness of the fivefactor model, independently of the
results of Cattel.43 He even thinks that
these five broad factors or dimensions
can form a framework within which to
organise and structure the personality
concept as it has been studied by
researchers such as Cattel,44 Norman,45
Eysenck,46 Guilford47 and Wiggins.48
The five dimensions reflect an individual’s stable and recurrent traits, as
opposed to temporary states that are not
taken into consideration in the description of an individual personality.
Goldberg’s results are supported by
another piece of research, which
analyses six studies, and shows the
robustness of the model unveiled by
Tupes and Christal,49 with five factors
labelled the ‘Big Five’ by Goldberg.
The number of dimensions is,
however, not confirmed by all
researchers. Some of them indeed note
that the parsimonious configuration of
the Big Five model has weaknesses (see
Eysenck50 for example).
Despite critiques, the Big Five
theory or five-factor model is widely
148
accepted. The five dimensions are
often (but not always) labelled
OCEAN:
— Dimension O: Openness to new experiences, to imagination and intellectual curiosity. This dimension
gathers such elements as the intensity, span and complexity of an
individual’s experiences.
— Dimension C: Conscientiousness.
This dimension gathers such traits
as scrupulousness, orderliness and
trustworthiness.
— Dimension E: Extraversion. This
dimension gathers such traits as
openness to others, sociability, impulsivity and likeability to feel
positive emotions.
— Dimension A: Agreeableness. This
dimension includes such traits
as kindness, modesty, trust and
altruism.
— Dimension N: Neuroticism. An individual is said to be neurotic if
they are not emotionally stable.
This dimension includes such traits
as anxiety, instability and nervousness.
Some researchers have shown that
each of the five dimensions could
be represented by a small number
of adjectives that are representative
enough of the dimension they load on.
In other words, these adjectives have a
high loading on one dimension and a
low (or close to 0) loading on
other dimensions. These adjectives are
named ‘markers’ of the Big Five
(Goldberg,51 Saucier52). They have
been developed to reduce the length of
questionnaires and to avoid respondents’ fatigue. This method enables a
psychologist to form a quick evaluation
of an individual. Saucier’s53 40 mini-
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DO BRAND PERSONALITY SCALES REALLY MEASURE BRAND PERSONALITY?
Table 1 Aaker’s brand personality scale and the psychological five factors model
Authors
Dimensions
Facets (**) or items (***)
Aaker
Sincerity
Excitement
Competence
Sophistication
Ruggedness
(**) Down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, cheerful
Daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date
Reliable, intelligent, successful
Upper-class, charming
Outdoorsy, tough
Saucier’s 40
mini-markers
Openness (or intellect)
(***) Creative, imaginative, intellectual, philosophical, deep,
complex, uncreative, unintellectual
Efficient, organised, systematic, practical, disorganised,
inefficient, sloppy, careless
Bold, extraverted, talkative, bashful, quiet, shy, withdrawn,
energetic
Kind, sympathetic, warm, cooperative, cold, unsympathetic,
harsh, rude
Unenvious, relaxed, fretful, envious, jealous, moody, touchy,
temperamental
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
(or Emotional Stability)
markers are presented in Table 1, along
with Aaker’s five-dimensional scale.54
Psychology applied to the brand
personality concept
The methodology that led to the
five-factor model has been directly
borrowed, and sometimes somehow
adapted, by some marketing researchers (Caprara et al.,55 Ferrandi and
Valette-Florence56). Thus if brands,
like individuals, can be described
with adjectives, the approach used in
psychology can be very interesting and
relevant to account for a brand personality as perceived by consumers.
Indeed, the personality of individuals is
perceived through their behaviour,
and, in exactly the same way, consumers can attribute a personality to
a brand according to its perceived
communication and ‘behaviours’. The
question is whether the terms that
encode personality in language can be
applied to brands. The existing literature about the relationship between an
individual and a brand (Plummer,57
Fournier58), about brand attachment or
even about the view of a brand as a
partner (Aaker et al.59), enables one to
think that, since brands can be personified, human personality descriptors
can be used to describe them. In fact,
the adjectives used to describe human
personality may not all be relevant to
brands. This is where an adaptation is
required. Some psychological aspects of
humans such as neurotic fatigue, for
example, may not be applicable to
brands. This need for adaptation has
also been suggested by Aaker60 and
Caprara et al.61
Brand personality measurement
Aaker’s62 work has tried to clarify the
concept and build a scale to measure it.
To achieve this, she largely followed
the psychologists’ steps in their study
of human personality. She followed
more particularly the studies made
by researchers who contributed to
the identification of five dimensions
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subsuming personality (the five-factor
model). More specifically, Aaker, and
those who replicated or followed her
work (Ferrandi et al.,63 Koebel and
Ladwein,64 Aaker et al.65), are walking
in the steps of the US psychologists,
Costa and McCrae, who adopted a
lexical approach, and whose personality inventory (NEO-PI-R66,67) is
renowned and has been translated into
several languages (see Rolland68 in
French, for example).
Most recent works on brand personality research are based on Aaker’s
global definition of the concept of
brand personality as ‘the set of human
characteristics associated to a brand’.69
Aaker explored brand personality on
the basis of 114 adjectives (or traits)
across 37 brands that cover various
product categories. She reached a fivefactor solution presented in Table 1.
Only three out of those five factors
correspond to elements of the fivefactor model in psychology.
ARE CURRENT BRAND PERSONALITY
SCALES VALID?
The issue of concept validity
So far, most of the research on brand
personality has focused on external
validity: scores of translations have
been undertaken by local researchers to
assess the ability of the scale to produce
its similar five factors in different
markets and cultures. The main issue
has not yet been addressed. It is not
because one calls it a ‘brand personality scale’ that it does actually
measure personality. This issue refers to
a critique of construct or concept
validity.
As seen above, Aaker defines
personality as being ‘the set of
150
human characteristics associated with a
brand’.70 This definition comes directly
from practitioners’ early use of brand
personality as a single all-encompassing
convenient item in the advertising
copy strategy to define all that is not
product related. Thus, from the start,
although the word ‘personality’ has a
very specific meaning in psychology, its
use in branding has tended to be rather
loose — an all-encompassing pot
pourri. The problem is that all the
work subsequent to Aaker’s was based
implicitly or explicitly on this
definition. Therefore, all these studies
share the same flaw in their conceptual
basis.
The main problem with the current
definition is that it is too wide — it
may embrace concepts beyond those of
brand personality. Marketing is an
applied science that sometimes imports
existing concepts from psychology and
other areas. The concept of personality
has been coined by psychology, and
maybe it would be more precise to
remain close to the psychological
definition of personality. Indeed, by
loosely defining ‘brand personality’, it
may mean almost everything related to
a human being and applied to brands.
Whereas psychologists have worked
over the years to exclude intellectual
abilities, gender and social class from
their personality definitions and scales,
adopting Aaker’s loose definition of
brand personality may mean that their
results are ignored, and the term ‘brand
personality’ is used to designate ‘any
non-physical attribute associated with a
brand’, including intellectual abilities,
gender or social class.
If Allport71 dedicated a whole chapter (as in most theoretical handbooks
dedicated to the study of personality)
to concept definition and to the
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DO BRAND PERSONALITY SCALES REALLY MEASURE BRAND PERSONALITY?
problems related to it, it is because the
step of definition of the concept is
tricky and very long. He examined
a large number of definitions and
rejected them because he found them
too vague or incomplete (hence meaningless). He then proposed a definition
of his own.
Without claiming to solve the
debate among psychologists concerning
the definition of personality, it is
possible to delineate quite precisely
what is included in, and what is
excluded from, the concept of personality in psychology and would be
advisable to do this in marketing for
the brand personality concept. In order
to move forward, one should stick to
the commonly agreed definition, summarised in the ‘Dictionnaire Fondamental de la Psychologie’.72 This
definition covers what is most widely
accepted among researchers, and was
presented above. The authors recommend that marketing researchers and
practitioners adopt a stricter definition
of the concept of brand personality in
order to reach a more exact measurement of that concept. The definition
proposed is: ‘brand personality is the set
of human personality traits that are both
applicable to and relevant for brands’. A
stricter definition means a definition
that enables a delineation of what is
included in and what is excluded
from the concept, as suggested by
Churchill.73
The main problematic items of the
scale
The current scale of so-called ‘brand
personality’ encompasses dimensions
conceptually distinct from the pure
concept of personality. The items in
the scale will now be analysed.
The item ‘competence’
Aaker’s scale holds ‘competence’ as
a major factor or trait among the
five identified. Competence refers to a
know-how (in the case of brands), or
to an ability to carry out something
properly. The definition of personality
in psychology does, however, exclude
any item related to abilities or cognitive capacities. Most psychologists exclude intelligence — as a cognitive
ability — from their personality tests.
Note that the adjectives ‘productive’, ‘well-organised’ and ‘(intellectually) efficient’ are descriptors of
personality (McCrae and Costa74), but
they do not relate to cognitive ability.
These items are applicable to brands,
but not in the framework of brand
personality: they are relevant to fields
such as organisation studies, control
of organisations or strategy. These
items are therefore applicable but not
relevant. This point cannot be made if
there is no strict prior definition of the
brand personality concept as suggested
in this paper.
The item ‘feminine’
For the item-generation step, Aaker
added some items related to gender,
social class and age. She bears out her
choice by quoting Levy who wrote:
‘researchers argue that brand personality includes demographic characteristics such as gender [which may be
all the more true in the languages
wherein there is a neutral pronoun to
talk about inanimates]. . ., age. . ., and
class’.75 By following this advice, one
confounds the personality of the brand
itself (source of the product) and the
personality of the purported receiver or
target, as portrayed in the brand’s
advertising. Another problem is that
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the item ‘feminine’ is a facet of Aaker’s
model, although gender is absent
from psychology scales of personality.
In addition, more often than not,
‘feminine’ is a value judgment. Its
meaning is tied to the culture.
The items related to social class
The authors think that to integrate
items related to age and social class is
also problematic. Indeed, if Levy76 talks
about age and social class, he never
explicitly says that they are relevant to
brand personality. He simply explains
that those items are part of the imagery
associated with typical users of the
brand (user imagery). He states that
an age and a social status could be
imbued to a brand through its typical
users. This argument is significant of
a conceptual lack of distinction between the personality of the brand (the
sender) and the person to whom the
brand seems to be speaking, the person
who is being addressed (the receiver)
(Kapferer77,78). Merging both dimensions introduces confusion and hinders
proper brand diagnosis and implementation. These arguments support the
authors’ belief that without a strict
definition of the concept, and without
the methodological stage of evaluation
of items, the measurement of brand
personality may become a ‘ragbag’.
Some other questionable items
Some authors (Davies et al.79) have
tried to replicate Aaker’s study in the
UK. In their replication, they found
that the items ‘Western’, ‘small town’
and ‘feminine’ accounted a lot for the
low reliability scores of their study.
The relevancy of these items in the
framework of personality is ques152
tionable. The presence of ‘Western’ is
a typical illustration of ethnocentrism
in marketing research. Why are the
equivalent terms ‘Asian’ or ‘Latin’
absent? Are the brands of the world
either Western or not?
Most importantly, the concept refers
to the value system underneath the
brand — what Kapferer80,81 calls its
‘cultural underpinnings, its cultural
facet’ in the brand identity prism (see
Figure 1). The brand identity prism
captures the key facets of a brand’s
identity: brand personality stricto sensu,
as defined above, is just one of these.
The flaws of the scale stem from its
conceptual definition
The weaknesses of the current scale of
brand personality derive from its construction methodology, itself embedded
in the flawed concept definition.
For item generation, in order to be
as exhaustive as possible and not to
forget any item, Aaker82 generated 309
items from four sources. The first three
were:
— literature review of scales used in
psychology to measure personality
— personality scales used by marketers
(academicians and practitioners)
— items generated by qualitative
studies.
These three sources were then completed by:
— a free association task performed
by respondents who were asked
to elicit personality traits that they
would associate with some brands.
The problem stems from the sources
that generated the items. As mentioned
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DO BRAND PERSONALITY SCALES REALLY MEASURE BRAND PERSONALITY?
before, early practitioners took the
concept of brand personality to have a
global, extended meaning. In this way,
the concept covers a variety of separate
constructs: the personality itself, but
also the values, the reflection of the
typical or stereotypical buyer, and so
on — all different facets of brand
identity. As a consequence, many items
of the so-called brand personality scale
are in fact measuring classical dimensions of product performance. Recent
empirical research by Romaniuk and
Ehrenberg83 demonstrates this point:
the authors analysed the average trait
attributions of Aaker’s scale across 12
markets and 118 brands. The brands
most associated with the so-called
brand personality item ‘energetic’ are
energiser drinks; the item ‘sensuous’ is
most associated with ice cream brands;
and ‘up to date’ is attributed most to
computers and electronic equipment.
included in the definition, and what is
excluded . . . Researchers should have
good reasons for proposing additional
new measures given the many available
for most marketing constructs of interest’. That is why this paper has tried to
analyse in detail both the shortcomings
of the existing definition and the
existing scales’ ability to measure the
concept of brand personality before
proposing a new methodology.
The present so-called brand personality scale merges all the human
characteristics applicable to brands under one blanket word — ‘personality’
— thus losing the distinctiveness of the
facets of brand identity; personality
being only one of them. It is time
to restrict the use of the concept of
brand personality to the meaning it
should never have lost: ‘the unique set
of human personality traits both applicable and relevant to brands’.
CONCLUSION
Acknowledgment
As demonstrated in this paper, the
existing measures for the construct of
brand personality do not measure that
construct, and introduce conceptual
confusion. They measure instead other
classical facets of brand identity, even
perceived product performance; recent
empirical research has reinforced this
conclusion. It seems that prior to the
construction of a valid measurement of
the construct of brand personality,
there must be a strict definition of the
construct, as well as the clarifying of
the conceptual difference between this
concept and the closely related ones.
As Churchill84 wrote, one should
always be aware that ‘the first in the
suggested procedure for developing
better measures involves specifying the
domain of the construct . . . what is
This paper has received the support of
Foundation HEC.
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(68)
(69)
(70)
(71)
(72)
(73)
(74)
(75)
(76)
(77)
(78)
(79)
(80)
(81)
(82)
(83)
(84)
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Aaker, ref. 5 above.
Caprara et al., ref. 6 above.
Aaker, ref. 5 above.
Ferrandi, J.-M., Fine-Falcy, S. and
Valette-Florence, P. (1999) ‘L’e´ chelle de
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Koebel, M.-N. and Ladwein, R. (1999)
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Aaker, J. L., Benet-Martinez, V. and
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Costa and McCrae, ref. 39 above.
Costa and McCrae, ref. 40 above.
Rolland, J.-P. (1993) ‘Validite´ de construct
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Aaker, ref. 5 above.
Ibid.
Allport, ref. 25 above.
Bloch et al. ref. 26 above.
Churchill, ref. 22 above.
McCrae, R. and Costa, P. T. (1985)
‘Updating Norman’s ‘‘adequate taxonomy’’:
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Vol. 49, No. 3.
Levy, ref. 3 above.
Ibid.
Kapferer, ref. 13 above.
Kapferer, ref. 14 above.
Davies, G., Chun, R. and Vinhas da Silva,
R. (2001) ‘The personification metaphor as
a measurement approach for corporate
reputation’, Corporate Reputation Review, Vol.
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Kapferer, ref. 13 above.
Kapferer, ref. 14 above.
Aaker, ref. 5 above.
Romaniuk, J. and Ehrenberg, A. (2003)
‘Do brands lack personality?’, Marketing
Science Centre research report no. 14, May,
University of South Australia.
Churchill, ref. 22 above.
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