A New Approach to Measure Perceived Brand Personality Associations Among Consumers

Sport Marketing Quarterly , 2010, 19 , 17-24, © 2010 West Virginia University B A New Approach to Measure r a Perceived Brand Personality n Associations Among Consumers d P Bob Heere e Bob Heere, PhD, is an assistant professor of kinesiology & health education at the University of Texas at Austin. His research r interests include social identity, community development, international sport management issues, and branding. s o Abstract n Brand personality research has made extensive use of factor modeling to grasp the dimensions of brand per - a sonality. Many scholars have adapted this technique to capture the brand personality of an organization. It l is argued in this study that letting consumers associate a brand with a personality through factor modeling i is flawed and anthropomorphic in nature. Therefore, the author proposes a different technique to measure t these associations, by asking managers about what personality associations they implement while marketing y their brand. Based on their responses, a list of associations was compiled and sent out to their fans, to meas - ure the effectiveness of the organization to portray the brand associations. Results indicate that by imple - menting this strategy managers are able to grasp a more precise concept of the perceived personality associations of the brand. In addition, the strategy provided managers with more in-depth information on their brand by measuring the brands’ importance and representativeness among their consumers. Introduction & O’Guinn, 2001). Sport leagues can use these fields of research to gain more insight in the ways in which their The global sport entertainment market is more com - own consumer base perceives their brand. Especially for petitive than ever, and on an everyday basis, people smaller sport leagues that gain their revenues from a can choose from many different sport leagues around small part of the population, outlining the right associ - the world (Raney & Bryant, 2006). Cable television has ations these people have with their product can be criti - opened up many new lines of media for sport leagues cal to their survival. The purpose of this study is to and people in the United States can now easily follow evaluate the set of brand personality associations man - the English Premier League, or the UEFA Champions agers use within their brand strategy, and how these League. Europeans in their turn have not only access to associations are perceived by the consumers of the dif - the different soccer leagues or Formula 1 Racing, but ferent teams within the New Zealand Netball League. can just as easily follow the American leagues such as By examining the brand personality associations of the the National Basketball Association, Major League teams in this league, the author expects to gain insight Baseball, or NASCAR racing, or the Australian Football on how well the managers of the different teams are League and the Super 14. In addition, people in New capable of branding their organizations through per - Zealand and Australia have access to their own sport as sonality associations, and how these associations are well as the aforementioned European and North perceived by their consumer base. American Leagues. In this cluttered environment it is important for sport leagues to understand how their Measuring Brand Personality league is perceived, and the associations people have with their league, so they can provide their organiza - Marketing scholars have been struggling with measuring tion with a distinctive brand image. the concept of brand personality. Brand personality is Branding research has made noticeable progress in referred to as the set of human characteristics associated outlining the relationship between consumers and with a brand (Aaker, 1997). Aaker introduced the con - organizations with research in brand equity, brand cept of brand personality and used factor analysis to experience, brand community, and brand personality develop a five dimensional scale to measure brand per - (Aaker, 1991; Aaker, 1997; Brakus, Schmitt, & sonality. Her model was built upon the work in psychol - Zarantello, 2009; Grohmann, 2009; Keller, 1993; Muniz ogy by Goldberg (1992), who developed a five factor Volume 19 • Number 1 • 2010 • Sport Marketing Quarterly 17 scale to measure personality. However, Aaker’s model with acknowledging the manipulating ability of mar - has severe limitations and despite the proposition of keters. Aaker that the scale is valid, its validity has yet to be Based on the notion that managers have a strong demonstrated (Azoulay & Kapferer, 2003). Despite the influence on the brand personality, are largely respon - large sample of brands that were used to develop this sible for creating one, and therefore should easily be scale, the spectrum of adjectives that were found to be a able to sum up the personality characteristics that lead part of the brand personality are limited and arguably them in their marketing strategy, it is proposed that only cover a small part of the universe of adjectives. In providing a set model for all brands is not only an contrast to the scale of Goldberg (1992), Aaker did not unnecessary exercise, it is also inherently flawed. The implement a synonym-antonym approach. For exam - use of factor analysis to develop a model to measure ple, Aaker argued that both contemporary and out - such a brand personality model should therefore be doorsy are part of the list, but likely antonyms to these regarded critically. The main purpose of factor analysis terms such as classic and urban are not present in the is to find patterns in relationships between observed model. Moreover, as Azoulay and Kapferer (2003) variables in order to measure these variables with a noted, this model failed to divide concepts of individual smaller amount of (unobserved) variables, called fac - psychology and social psychology, and assigned certain tors (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2005). groups characteristics as a part of an individual’s per - However, while factor analysis assumes these latent sonality such as gender and social class. factors are present, Aaker (1997) never provides con - In addition to the criticism of Azoulay and Kapferer ceptual support for her five latent variables (sincerity, (2003), the author would like to propose the scale as excitement, competence, sophistication, and rugged - developed by Aaker (1997) lacks validity at a conceptu - ness.) and the five resulting factors found by her might al level, based on the notion that a brand cannot pos - be more of the result of schematic associations that sess personality traits. Claiming a brand has a consumers have with the brands in their respective personality, is an anthropomorphism . A brand can contexts, rather than these variables represent a latent only be given traits by people, and mainly originates as trait. It is likely that in certain cultures and contexts a a result of the marketing approach of the managers grouping exists that in other contexts is not there. within the company. The anthropomorphic associa - Smith, Graetz, and Westerbeek (2006) performed a tions consumers have of the brand are caused by mar - brand personality study for an Australian netball team keting strategies of the organization. Nike could be and their results provided a different model than Aaker regarded as an innovative, inspirational, and creative proposes. If the work of Aaker (1997) is compared company because the organization has spent billions of with the study of Smith et al. (2006), there are two dollars over time in creating that image through their dimensions that particularly stand out and indicate marketing strategies (Wieden, 1992). The argument that the factors Aaker found might be more schematic that the consumers’ perception of the brand personali - based, than true factors. Excitement, as proposed by ty is manipulated by the marketers is supported within Aaker, represents associations such as up-to-date, spir - the study of Johar, Sengupta, and Aaker (2005). They ited, exciting, cool, and young. A claim that for a sport examined the effects of an experiment (marketing team is counter-intuitive, since excitement in sport is strategies) on the consumers’ perception of the brand often referred to by fans as a close contest, offensive personality and acknowledge that those perceptions play or athletic ability (Wann, 1995), and might only only alter after exposure to new brand information. To have low correlations with associations such as cool a similar extent, Swaminathan, Stilley, and Ahluwalia and young. The other factor that might be particularly (2009) performed experiments in which manipulations troublesome is sophistication. Sophistication repre - were performed to alter and/or create a brand person - sents associations such as feminine, smooth, good- ality for (fictitious and non-fictitious) brands. Findings looking, upper class, and charming. Even though a of brand personality research so far are therefore not female netball team is unquestionably feminine (as only a simple reflection of what image the manage - Smith and colleagues found), and thus has a high cor - ment successfully or unsuccessfully marketed to the relation to the brand, the other associations were not outside world, they are often simply a confirmation of strongly related to a netball team brand. Research out - what brand image a company attempts to compose. side the realm of sport management indeed indicates Brand personality associations are the result of an end

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