Brand Personality
Brand personality is the set of human-like traits people attach to brands. Consumers draw these traits from the product category, features, packaging and advertising, and the idea is that people tend to choose brands whose personality matches their own or supports a trait they want more of.
What it is
In the vault, the concept comes from a consumer behaviour textbook, which describes brands being given traits much as people are. A perfume, for example, can project youth or modesty. The concept is a framework for describing brands, not a single tested finding.
A 2001 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Jennifer Aaker, Verónica Benet-MartÃnez and Jordi Garolera studied how those traits are structured in Japan, the United States and Spain.
In effect
Aaker and colleagues ran four studies. In Japan and the United States they found a set of dimensions common to both, plus peacefulness in Japan and ruggedness in the United States. In Spain the common dimensions appeared again alongside a dimension specific to Spain, passion. The authors read brands as carriers of a culture's values and beliefs.
The article Taking a Brand Global: Psychology Across Cultures draws a practical reading, which is ours: much of what a brand stands for can travel, and the local part needs a narrower check.
What it does not say
The concept does not say that the dimensions found in three countries hold everywhere, and it ranks no culture. The textbook framing is a description of how brands are discussed, and the 2001 study is the evidence cited here for cross-country structure.
Sources
- Aaker, J. L., Benet-Martinez, V., & Garolera, J. (2001). Consumption symbols as carriers of culture: A study of Japanese and Spanish brand personality constructs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(3). https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.3.492
- Consumer Behaviour textbook, as recorded in the vault's reading notes (author and title only).