Do Brand Personalityscales Really Measure Brand Personality

sumers have no difficulty answeringmetaphorical questions such as: ‘sup-pose the brand is a person, what kindof person would he/she be, with whatpersonality?’ In fact, consumers doperceive brands as having personalitytraits. Recent research has even shownthat medical doctors (generalists as wellas specialists) had no difficulty inattributing personality traits to phar-maceutical brands; moreover, thesetraits were actually significantly corre-lated to medical prescription itself.4

That is why brand personality mayhave a role to play in the constructionand/or management of brands.

Since 1997, and the pioneering scaleof brand personality proposed byAaker,5 a new stream of research hasbeen born. This renewed interest in arather old concept (brand personality)signals that the metaphor of brands aspeople is held as increasingly more

INTRODUCTIONIn practice, the personification ofbrands has happened frequently sincecelebrities started to endorse brands.The use of famous people and theirpersonalities helps marketers positiontheir brands, and can even seduceconsumers who identify themselveswith these stars. In other words,consumers could perceive a con-gruence between their (ideal or actual)perceived selves and that of the star,and hence form an attraction to thebrand.1,2 Or, more simply, this per-sonality endowment may merely givethe brand a meaning in the consumers’eyes.3

Beyond this specific advertisingstrategy, it has long been recognisedthat brands could be said to have apersonality, as any person has apersonality. In any case, in focus groupsor in depth interviewing, con-

� HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 11, NO. 2, 143–155 NOVEMBER 2003 143

Audrey AzoulayHEC (Paris), Graduate School ofManagement, 78350Jouy-en-Josas, France

Tel: �33 1 39 67 72 54;E-mail: [email protected];[email protected]

Do brand personality scales reallymeasure brand personality?Received (in revised form): 21st June, 2003

AUDREY AZOULAYis a doctoral candidate at HEC Graduate School of Management (Paris).

JEAN-NOEL KAPFERERis Professor of Marketing at HFC Graduate School of Management, researcher and consultant. He is the authorof more than 100 articles and nine books on communication and brand management, two of which have beenwidely translated: ‘Strategic Brand Management’ and ‘Re-inventing the Brand’ both published by Kogan Page,London.

AbstractSince 1997, literature and research on the concept of brand personality have been flourishing, andspecific 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, butmerge a number of dimensions of brand identity — personality being only one of them — whichneed to be kept separate both on theoretical grounds and for practical use. Brand research andtheorising, as well as managerial practice, have nothing to gain from the present state ofunchallenged conceptual confusion.

of brand personality are first brieflyreviewed. The existing definition andmeasurements of brand personality andof personality in psychology are thenexamined for comparison purposes.Finally, it is demonstrated that theexisting definition and measurementmethodology have led to the construc-tion of scales that do not really measurebrand personality, but other unrelatedconcepts.

BRAND PERSONALITY: HISTORY OFTHE CONCEPT IN MARKETINGAdvertisers and marketing practitionershave been the first ones to coin theterm ‘brand personality’, well beforethe academics studied and accepted theconcept. As early as 1958, Martineau7

used the word to refer to the non-material dimensions that make a storespecial — its character. King8 writesthat ‘people choose their brands thesame way they choose their friends;in addition to the skills and physicalcharacteristics, they simply like them aspeople’. He goes on quoting researchfrom the J. Walter Thompson advertis-ing agency indicating that consumersdo tend to attribute facets of per-sonality to brands and talk fluentlyabout these facets. Plummer9 speaks ofOrangina soft drink as having a ‘sen-suous’ personality.

In addition, motivation researchmade popular the use of projectivetechniques to capture these facets. Forinstance, it has become commonplaceto make use of metaphors in focusgroups, where consumers are asked totalk about a brand as if it was a person,a movie star, an animal, and so on. Asearly as 1982, Seguela,10 creative vice-president of the RSCG advertisingagency, introduced the ‘star strategy’ as

pertinent at a time when market-ing stresses so much the impor-tance of creating relationships withbrands. Most of the research papers onbrand personality are now based onAaker’s scale. As is frequently the casewith pioneer studies, they lead to abandwagon effect: a first wave ofresearch consists of replication studiesin the country of the first study. Thena second wave assesses the externalvalidity of the scale in foreign countriesin order to evaluate the robustness ofthe scale, its ability to support transla-tions and intercultural uses. Meanwhilethe scale’s use becomes widespread andgoes unchallenged. It is the pur-pose of this paper to demonstratethat the current scale of brand per-sonality, which is gaining popularity inacademic marketing circles, does not infact measure brand personality, butmerges a number of dimensions of abrand identity which need to be keptseparate both on theoretical groundsand for practical use. Certainly brandpersonality is a useful concept, butbrand identity has more facets than thepersonality facet alone.

This paper argues that a stric-ter definition of brand personality isneeded to avoid the present state ofconceptual confusion in branding re-search, and to allow brand personalityto be a rich and more useful conceptwith which to understand and managebrands. One should recall that ‘per-sonality’ and other concepts used inmarketing (such as ‘self’ or values)derive from psychology, and shouldtherefore be defined and strictly des-cribed in relation to their definition inpsychology, although some adaptationsseem necessary.6

To better understand what brandpersonality is, the roots and history

144 � HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 11, NO. 2, 143–155 NOVEMBER 2003

AZOULAY AND KAPFERER

copy — it became widespread to see anew item to be filled by accountexecutives: brand personality (as a sub-stitute to the former item: tone ofadvertising). In fact, this meant thattone (an executional constant) wouldnot have to be invented, but derivedfrom the type of brand one wanted tocreate, to build and to reinforce.

Starting in the 1970s, whatever theclient or its advertising agency, allcopy strategies included a provisionfor describing brand personality, afterhaving stated the target, the brandpromise and the reason why. From thisit can be seen that the use of‘brand personality’ originated as anon-product-based definition of thebrand: it captured all that was notbound to the product’s use, perfor-mance, benefits, attributes, and so on.Interestingly, neither was it a descrip-tion of the target itself, like whenone describes a brand by the life-style of its target. In copy strategiesbrand personality was used as a com-mon, practical, but rather loose, wordfor assessing non-product-based, non-functional dimensions of the brand; itcaptured the singularity of the sourceof the product as if it were a person.

Later, on the research side, the brandidentity frameworks13–18 always quotedbrand personality as a dimension or afacet of brand identity — namely thosetraits of human personality that can beattributed to the brand. Among otherdimensions are the brand inner values(its cultural facet), the brand relation-ship facet (its style of behaviour, ofconduct), the brand-reflected consumerfacet, and the brand physical facet (itsmaterial distinguishing traits).19,20 (SeeFigure 1).

At odds with this general concep-tualisation of personality as one part of

the new mode of brand manage-ment for mature markets. In maturemarkets, non-product-based features ofthe brand start to have a greatereffect on consumers’ buying deci-sions, even though, in focus groups,people speak of the product first forrationalisation motives. Seguela recom-mended that all brands be describedalong three facets: the physical one(what does the product do and howwell does it perform?), the character(brand personality facet) and the style(executional elements for advertis-ing and communication). Regardingdesign and corporate identity, in 1978Olins’ book ‘Corporate Personality’11

refers to the fact that design is not hereto describe a product, but to endoweither its brand or corporation withvalues and non-material distinguishingattributes.

In practice, these publications ex-pressed a growing dissatisfaction withan enduring tenet of marketing practiceequating the product and the brand;that is, defining the brand by aproduct’s performance. A typical ex-ample of that was the famous ‘uniqueselling proposition’ (USP), the termcreated by Rosser Reeves,12 the authorof ‘Reality in Advertising’ (1961), atitle which unveiled the vision of abrand as a product with a plus.

In the late 1980s, realising that, witha growing number of copies and theabundance of similar products, it wasmore and more difficult to differentiatebrands on the basis of performance, TedBates — the advertising agency whereRosser Reeves worked — introducedan additional concept: the unique sell-ing personality. As a consequence, inthe famous ‘copy strategy’ — the es-sential single sheet which summarisesthe advertising strategy as related to


DO BRAND PERSONALITY SCALES REALLY MEASURE BRAND PERSONALITY?

and conceptual clarity, one shouldfollow Churchill’s measurement adviceto be ‘exacting in delineating what isincluded in the definition and what isexcluded’.22 The current paper suggestsa clear and pure definition of theconcept of brand personality, separatefrom the other human characteristicswhich can be associated with a brand.This definition should remain closeto that used in psychology, wherethe concept of personality has beenanalysed for decades, although it shouldbe adapted to brands.

PERSONALITY: CONCEPT ANDMEASUREMENTIn order to clarify the issues, theconcept of personality in psychology,which is at the very basis of any workon brand personality, will be ex-amined.

The human personality concept inpsychologyWithout going back to the Latin ortheological roots of the word ‘per-

brand identity — namely referring tothe traits of human personality at-tributed to the brand — Aaker,21 inthe process of building a scale formeasurement purposes, defines brandpersonality not as a part but as thewhole: ‘the set of human characteristicsassociated to a brand’. However, innervalues, physical traits and pictures ofthe typical user are also ‘human charac-teristics’ that can be associated with abrand. Hence the risk (if one followsthis too-global definition) of muddlingconceptually and empirically distinctbrand identity facets within a singlescale of so-called ‘brand personality’.

This recent loose usage of theconcept of brand personality for scalemeasurement purposes is, in fact, goingback to the historical early use bypioneer professionals. They rightly feltthat the copy strategy did successfullydefine the product’s compelling com-petitive advantage (USP), but failed tocapture the essence of the source ofthat product (the brand). They coinedthe term ‘brand personality’ to captureall the non-product dimensions.

To come back to theoretical unity


Figure 1: Brand identity prismSource: Kapferer (1992, 1998)

Physical

facet

Relationship

Reflected

consumer

Personality

Culture

(values)

Consumer

mentalisation

Constructed receiver

Constructed source

Externalisation In

ternalisa

tion


being, in his/her way to react to the situa-tions in which s/he is.

In most cases, the word does not includethe cognitive aspects of the behavior (intel-ligence, abilities, knowledge). It always dealswith the affective, emotional and dynamicaspects. Personality is [more often than not]described in terms of traits.’

Personality is a clear construct differentfrom cognitive aspects of the person, orfrom his or her skills and abilities. It isdescribed by traits.

The theory of traits is crucial topersonality theory insofar as it hasenabled the practical application of thetheory of personality, the constructionof personality scales, and the identifica-tion of the corpus of words that definepersonality. As Allport27 described it, atrait is ‘a generalized and focalizedneuropsychic system (peculiar to theindividual), with the capacity to rendermany stimuli functionally equivalent,and to initiate and guide consistent(equivalent) forms of adaptive andexpressive behavior’. The researchersin the 1930s to 1950s focused more onthe construction of an exhaustive andrepresentative list of all the terms of thelanguage that could possibly describethe personality, than on the searchfor a perfect definition of the con-cept. That research (including that ofCattel28) is the basis of the currentpopular personality theories. The studyof personality by a lexical approachdates back to the 1920s in Germanyand the 1930s in the USA. It has sincebeen developed in various countries,but the US and German studies remainthe central ones in the field.

The first exhaustive published list ofterms present in the English dictionaryrelated to personality and was preparedby Allport and Odbert29 in 1936 (they

sonality’ — the meanings of which arethen manifold — the first psychologistwho constructed a personality theorywas Freud. Most important is thatFreud23 and his disciples consideredpersonality to be something dynamic,cumulative, but, above all, they viewedit as being durable and relatively stableover time. The research of Sullivan24

follows the same lines, especially con-cerning the definition of personality.Indeed, Sullivan thought that:

‘Personality could be defined only in termsof the reactions . . . of an individual towardsother people in recurrent interpersonal situa-tions in life. He called the smallest unit ofrecurrent reactions dynamism. He used thatword to describe certain patterns of feelingsor behaviour . . . and also to describe entitiesor mechanisms that are the components ofthe personality . . . Those dynamisms arequite enduring and accumulate throughoutlife.’

This definition is quite vague, but itgave way to the trait theory. Theimportance of defining the concept ofpersonality is crucial insofar as it willinfluence the theory that will ensue.When trying to write a book devotedto explaining what personality reallyis, Allport25 wrote an entire chap-ter entitled ‘Defining personality’. Inthis chapter, he reviewed 49 defini-tions before giving one of his own.This book is a remarkable effort todefine this field of study. The defini-tions reviewed have common pointsthat can be found in Allport’s defini-tion. The ‘Dictionnaire Fondamentalde la Psychologie’26 summarises thisresearch and these definitions:

‘[Personality is the] set of relatively stableand general dynamic, emotional and affec-tive characteristics of an individual’s way of



accepted. The five dimensions areoften (but not always) labelledOCEAN:

— Dimension O: Openness to new ex-periences, to imagination and in-tellectual curiosity. This dimensiongathers such elements as the inten-sity, span and complexity of anindividual’s experiences.

— Dimension C: Conscientiousness.This dimension gathers such traitsas scrupulousness, orderliness andtrustworthiness.

— Dimension E: Extraversion. Thisdimension gathers such traits asopenness to others, sociability, im-pulsivity and likeability to feelpositive emotions.

— Dimension A: Agreeableness. Thisdimension includes such traitsas kindness, modesty, trust andaltruism.

— Dimension N: Neuroticism. An in-dividual is said to be neurotic ifthey are not emotionally stable.This dimension includes such traitsas anxiety, instability and nervous-ness.

Some researchers have shown thateach of the five dimensions couldbe represented by a small numberof adjectives that are representativeenough of the dimension they load on.In other words, these adjectives have ahigh loading on one dimension and alow (or close to 0) loading onother dimensions. These adjectives arenamed ‘markers’ of the Big Five(Goldberg,51 Saucier52). They havebeen developed to reduce the length ofquestionnaires and to avoid respon-dents’ fatigue. This method enables apsychologist to form a quick evaluationof an individual. Saucier’s53 40 mini-

listed 18,000 terms). Most studies fol-lowing that of Cattel30 have convergedtowards the conclusion that humanpersonality could be ‘summarised’ by asmall number of factors (from two to16). A large number of studies havereached the number five.31–40

The reduction in the number ofitems has been made on the basis of arelevancy criterion: the terms that havebeen taken out are those which arejudged obscure, ambiguous or collo-quial, and those that are judgmental orthat introduce a gender distinction. Thefactors are the result of factor analysis,most of the time with a varimaxrotation. As Digman41 explains in hisliterature review, Goldberg42 too hasobserved the robustness of the five-factor model, independently of theresults of Cattel.43 He even thinks thatthese five broad factors or dimensionscan form a framework within which toorganise and structure the personalityconcept as it has been studied byresearchers such as Cattel,44 Norman,45

Eysenck,46 Guilford47 and Wiggins.48

The five dimensions reflect an in-dividual’s stable and recurrent traits, asopposed to temporary states that are nottaken into consideration in the descrip-tion of an individual personality.

Goldberg’s results are supported byanother piece of research, whichanalyses six studies, and shows therobustness of the model unveiled byTupes and Christal,49 with five factorslabelled the ‘Big Five’ by Goldberg.The number of dimensions is,however, not confirmed by allresearchers. Some of them indeed notethat the parsimonious configuration ofthe Big Five model has weaknesses (seeEysenck50 for example).

Despite critiques, the Big Fivetheory or five-factor model is widely



individual and a brand (Plummer,57

Fournier58), about brand attachment oreven about the view of a brand as apartner (Aaker et al.59), enables one tothink that, since brands can be per-sonified, human personality descriptorscan be used to describe them. In fact,the adjectives used to describe humanpersonality may not all be relevant tobrands. This is where an adaptation isrequired. Some psychological aspects ofhumans such as neurotic fatigue, forexample, may not be applicable tobrands. This need for adaptation hasalso been suggested by Aaker60 andCaprara et al.61

Brand personality measurementAaker’s62 work has tried to clarify theconcept and build a scale to measure it.To achieve this, she largely followedthe psychologists’ steps in their studyof human personality. She followedmore particularly the studies madeby researchers who contributed tothe identification of five dimensions

markers are presented in Table 1, alongwith Aaker’s five-dimensional scale.54

Psychology applied to the brandpersonality conceptThe methodology that led to thefive-factor model has been directlyborrowed, and sometimes somehowadapted, by some marketing research-ers (Caprara et al.,55 Ferrandi andValette-Florence56). Thus if brands,like individuals, can be describedwith adjectives, the approach used inpsychology can be very interesting andrelevant to account for a brand per-sonality as perceived by consumers.Indeed, the personality of individuals isperceived through their behaviour,and, in exactly the same way, con-sumers can attribute a personality toa brand according to its perceivedcommunication and ‘behaviours’. Thequestion is whether the terms thatencode personality in language can beapplied to brands. The existing litera-ture about the relationship between an


Table 1 Aaker’s brand personality scale and the psychological five factors model

Authors Dimensions Facets (**) or items (***)

Aaker SincerityExcitementCompetenceSophisticationRuggedness

(**) Down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, cheerfulDaring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-dateReliable, intelligent, successfulUpper-class, charmingOutdoorsy, tough

Saucier’s 40mini-markers

Openness (or intellect)

Conscientiousness

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticism(or Emotional Stability)

(***) Creative, imaginative, intellectual, philosophical, deep,complex, uncreative, unintellectualEfficient, organised, systematic, practical, disorganised,inefficient, sloppy, carelessBold, extraverted, talkative, bashful, quiet, shy, withdrawn,energeticKind, sympathetic, warm, cooperative, cold, unsympathetic,harsh, rudeUnenvious, relaxed, fretful, envious, jealous, moody, touchy,temperamental


human characteristics associated with abrand’.70 This definition comes directlyfrom practitioners’ early use of brandpersonality as a single all-encompassingconvenient item in the advertisingcopy strategy to define all that is notproduct related. Thus, from the start,although the word ‘personality’ has avery specific meaning in psychology, itsuse in branding has tended to be ratherloose — an all-encompassing potpourri. The problem is that all thework subsequent to Aaker’s was basedimplicitly or explicitly on thisdefinition. Therefore, all these studiesshare the same flaw in their conceptualbasis.

The main problem with the currentdefinition is that it is too wide — itmay embrace concepts beyond those ofbrand personality. Marketing is anapplied science that sometimes importsexisting concepts from psychology andother areas. The concept of personalityhas been coined by psychology, andmaybe it would be more precise toremain close to the psychologicaldefinition of personality. Indeed, byloosely defining ‘brand personality’, itmay mean almost everything related toa human being and applied to brands.Whereas psychologists have workedover the years to exclude intellectualabilities, gender and social class fromtheir personality definitions and scales,adopting Aaker’s loose definition ofbrand personality may mean that theirresults are ignored, and the term ‘brandpersonality’ is used to designate ‘anynon-physical attribute associated with abrand’, including intellectual abilities,gender or social class.

If Allport71 dedicated a whole chap-ter (as in most theoretical handbooksdedicated to the study of personality)to concept definition and to the

subsuming personality (the five-factormodel). More specifically, Aaker, andthose who replicated or followed herwork (Ferrandi et al.,63 Koebel andLadwein,64 Aaker et al.65), are walkingin the steps of the US psychologists,Costa and McCrae, who adopted alexical approach, and whose per-sonality inventory (NEO-PI-R66,67) isrenowned and has been translated intoseveral languages (see Rolland68 inFrench, for example).

Most recent works on brand per-sonality research are based on Aaker’sglobal definition of the concept ofbrand personality as ‘the set of humancharacteristics associated to a brand’.69

Aaker explored brand personality onthe basis of 114 adjectives (or traits)across 37 brands that cover variousproduct categories. She reached a five-factor solution presented in Table 1.Only three out of those five factorscorrespond to elements of the five-factor model in psychology.

ARE CURRENT BRAND PERSONALITYSCALES VALID?

The issue of concept validitySo far, most of the research on brandpersonality has focused on externalvalidity: scores of translations havebeen undertaken by local researchers toassess the ability of the scale to produceits similar five factors in differentmarkets and cultures. The main issuehas not yet been addressed. It is notbecause one calls it a ‘brand per-sonality scale’ that it does actuallymeasure personality. This issue refers toa critique of construct or conceptvalidity.

As seen above, Aaker definespersonality as being ‘the set of



The item ‘competence’Aaker’s scale holds ‘competence’ asa major factor or trait among thefive identified. Competence refers to aknow-how (in the case of brands), orto an ability to carry out somethingproperly. The definition of personalityin psychology does, however, excludeany item related to abilities or cogni-tive capacities. Most psychologists ex-clude intelligence — as a cognitiveability — from their personality tests.

Note that the adjectives ‘produc-tive’, ‘well-organised’ and ‘(intellec-tually) efficient’ are descriptors ofpersonality (McCrae and Costa74), butthey do not relate to cognitive ability.These items are applicable to brands,but not in the framework of brandpersonality: they are relevant to fieldssuch as organisation studies, controlof organisations or strategy. Theseitems are therefore applicable but notrelevant. This point cannot be made ifthere is no strict prior definition of thebrand personality concept as suggestedin this paper.

The item ‘feminine’For the item-generation step, Aakeradded some items related to gender,social class and age. She bears out herchoice by quoting Levy who wrote:‘researchers argue that brand per-sonality includes demographic charac-teristics such as gender [which may beall the more true in the languageswherein there is a neutral pronoun totalk about inanimates]. . ., age. . ., andclass’.75 By following this advice, oneconfounds the personality of the branditself (source of the product) and thepersonality of the purported receiver ortarget, as portrayed in the brand’sadvertising. Another problem is that

problems related to it, it is because thestep of definition of the concept istricky and very long. He examineda large number of definitions andrejected them because he found themtoo vague or incomplete (hence mean-ingless). He then proposed a definitionof his own.

Without claiming to solve thedebate among psychologists concerningthe definition of personality, it ispossible to delineate quite preciselywhat is included in, and what isexcluded from, the concept of per-sonality in psychology and would beadvisable to do this in marketing forthe brand personality concept. In orderto move forward, one should stick tothe commonly agreed definition, sum-marised in the ‘Dictionnaire Fon-damental de la Psychologie’.72 Thisdefinition covers what is most widelyaccepted among researchers, and waspresented above. The authors recom-mend that marketing researchers andpractitioners adopt a stricter definitionof the concept of brand personality inorder to reach a more exact measure-ment of that concept. The definitionproposed is: ‘brand personality is the setof human personality traits that are bothapplicable to and relevant for brands’. Astricter definition means a definitionthat enables a delineation of what isincluded in and what is excludedfrom the concept, as suggested byChurchill.73

The main problematic items of thescaleThe current scale of so-called ‘brandpersonality’ encompasses dimensionsconceptually distinct from the pureconcept of personality. The items inthe scale will now be analysed.



tionable. The presence of ‘Western’ isa typical illustration of ethnocentrismin marketing research. Why are theequivalent terms ‘Asian’ or ‘Latin’absent? Are the brands of the worldeither Western or not?

Most importantly, the concept refersto the value system underneath thebrand — what Kapferer80,81 calls its‘cultural underpinnings, its culturalfacet’ in the brand identity prism (seeFigure 1). The brand identity prismcaptures the key facets of a brand’sidentity: brand personality stricto sensu,as defined above, is just one of these.

The flaws of the scale stem from itsconceptual definitionThe weaknesses of the current scale ofbrand personality derive from its con-struction methodology, itself embeddedin the flawed concept definition.

For item generation, in order to beas exhaustive as possible and not toforget any item, Aaker82 generated 309items from four sources. The first threewere:

— literature review of scales used inpsychology to measure personality

— personality scales used by marketers(academicians and practitioners)

— items generated by qualitativestudies.

These three sources were then com-pleted by:

— a free association task performedby respondents who were askedto elicit personality traits that theywould associate with some brands.

The problem stems from the sourcesthat generated the items. As mentioned

the item ‘feminine’ is a facet of Aaker’smodel, although gender is absentfrom psychology scales of personality.In addition, more often than not,‘feminine’ is a value judgment. Itsmeaning is tied to the culture.

The items related to social classThe authors think that to integrateitems related to age and social class isalso problematic. Indeed, if Levy76 talksabout age and social class, he neverexplicitly says that they are relevant tobrand personality. He simply explainsthat those items are part of the imageryassociated with typical users of thebrand (user imagery). He states thatan age and a social status could beimbued to a brand through its typicalusers. This argument is significant ofa conceptual lack of distinction be-tween the personality of the brand (thesender) and the person to whom thebrand seems to be speaking, the personwho is being addressed (the receiver)(Kapferer77,78). Merging both dimen-sions introduces confusion and hindersproper brand diagnosis and implemen-tation. These arguments support theauthors’ belief that without a strictdefinition of the concept, and withoutthe methodological stage of evaluationof items, the measurement of brandpersonality may become a ‘ragbag’.

Some other questionable itemsSome authors (Davies et al.79) havetried to replicate Aaker’s study in theUK. In their replication, they foundthat the items ‘Western’, ‘small town’and ‘feminine’ accounted a lot for thelow reliability scores of their study.The relevancy of these items in theframework of personality is ques-



included in the definition, and what isexcluded . . . Researchers should havegood reasons for proposing additionalnew measures given the many availablefor most marketing constructs of inter-est’. That is why this paper has tried toanalyse in detail both the shortcomingsof the existing definition and theexisting scales’ ability to measure theconcept of brand personality beforeproposing a new methodology.

The present so-called brand per-sonality scale merges all the humancharacteristics applicable to brands un-der one blanket word — ‘personality’— thus losing the distinctiveness of thefacets of brand identity; personalitybeing only one of them. It is timeto restrict the use of the concept ofbrand personality to the meaning itshould never have lost: ‘the unique setof human personality traits both ap-plicable and relevant to brands’.

AcknowledgmentThis paper has received the support ofFoundation HEC.

References(1) Dolich, I. (1969) ‘Congruence relationships

between self images and product brands’,Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 6,February, pp. 80–84.

(2) Sirgy, M. J., Grewal, D., Mangleburg, T. F.,Park, J., Chang, K. S., Claiborne, C. B.,Johar, J. S. and Berkman, H. (1997)‘Assessing the predictive validity of twomethods of measuring self-imagecongruence’, Journal of the Academy ofMarketing Science, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp.229–241.

(3) Levy, S. J. (1959) ‘Symbols for sales’,Harvard Business Review, Vol. 37, Summer.

(4) Kapferer, J.-N. (1998) ‘The role of brandingin medical prescription: An empiricalinvestigation’, HEC working paper, Jouy enJosas, France.

(5) Aaker, J. L. (1997) ‘Dimensions of brandpersonality’, Journal of Marketing Research,Vol. 24, pp. 347–356.

before, early practitioners took theconcept of brand personality to have aglobal, extended meaning. In this way,the concept covers a variety of separateconstructs: the personality itself, butalso the values, the reflection of thetypical or stereotypical buyer, and soon — all different facets of brandidentity. As a consequence, many itemsof the so-called brand personality scaleare in fact measuring classical dimen-sions of product performance. Recentempirical research by Romaniuk andEhrenberg83 demonstrates this point:the authors analysed the average traitattributions of Aaker’s scale across 12markets and 118 brands. The brandsmost associated with the so-calledbrand personality item ‘energetic’ areenergiser drinks; the item ‘sensuous’ ismost associated with ice cream brands;and ‘up to date’ is attributed most tocomputers and electronic equipment.

CONCLUSIONAs demonstrated in this paper, theexisting measures for the construct ofbrand personality do not measure thatconstruct, and introduce conceptualconfusion. They measure instead otherclassical facets of brand identity, evenperceived product performance; recentempirical research has reinforced thisconclusion. It seems that prior to theconstruction of a valid measurement ofthe construct of brand personality,there must be a strict definition of theconstruct, as well as the clarifying ofthe conceptual difference between thisconcept and the closely related ones.As Churchill84 wrote, one shouldalways be aware that ‘the first in thesuggested procedure for developingbetter measures involves specifying thedomain of the construct . . . what is



(27) Allport, ref. 25 above.(28) Cattel, R. B. (1945) ‘The description of

personality: Principles and findings in afactor analysis’, American Journal ofPsychology, Vol. 58, pp. 59–90.

(29) Allport, G. W. and Odbert, H. S. (1936)‘Trait names: A psycho-lexical study’,Psychological Monographs, Vol. 47, No. 211,pp. 1–171.

(30) Cattel, ref. 28 above.(31) Tupes, E. C. and Christal, R. E. (1961)

‘Recurrent personality factors based on traitratings’, technical report, USAF, LacklandAir Force Base, Texas.

(32) Norman, W. T. (1963) ‘Toward an adequatetaxonomy of personality attributes:Replicated factor structure in peernomination personality ratings’, Journal ofAbnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 66,pp. 574–583.

(33) Norman, W. T. (1967) ‘2,800 personalitytrait descriptors: Normative operatingcharacteristics for a university population’,Department of Psychology, University ofMichigan, Ann Arbor.

(34) Goldberg, L. R. (1976) ‘Language andpersonality: Toward a taxonomy oftrait-descriptive terms’, Istanbul Studies inExperimental Psychology, Vol. 12,pp. 1–23.

(35) Goldberg, L. R. (1982) ‘From ace tozombie: Some explorations in the languageof personality’, Advances in PersonalityAssessment, Vol. 1, pp. 203–234; Spielberger,C. and Butcher, J. (eds) Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, Hillsdale, NJ.

(36) Goldberg, L. R. (1990) ‘An alternative‘‘description of personality’’: The big fivefactor structure’, Journal of Personality andSocial Psychology, Vol. 59, No. 6, pp.1216–1229.

(37) Goldberg, L. R. (1992) ‘The developmentof markers for the big five factor structure’,Psychological Assessment, Vol. 4, No. 1,pp. 26–42.

(38) Digman, J. M. (1990) ‘Personality structure:Emergence of the five-factor model’,Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 41,pp. 417–440.

(39) Costa, P. T. and McCrae, R. R. (1985)‘The NEO Personality Inventory Manual’,Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc.,Odessa, FL.

(40) Costa, P. T. and McCrae, R. R. (1992)‘The Revised NEO Personality Inventoryand NEO Five-Factor InventoryProfessional Manual’, PsychologicalAssessment Resources, Inc., Odessa, FL.

(41) Digman, ref. 38 above.

(6) Caprara, G. V., Barbaranelli, C. and Guido,G. (2001) ‘Brand personality: How to makethe metaphor fit?’, Journal of EconomicPsychology, Vol. 22, pp. 377–395.

(7) Martineau, P. (1958) ‘The personality of aretail store’, Harvard Business Review, Vol.36, Nov–Dec.

(8) King, S. (1970) ‘What is a Brand?’, J.Walter Thompson Company Limited,London.

(9) Plummer, J. T. (1984–85) ‘How personalitymakes a difference’, Journal of AdvertisingResearch, Vol. 24, Dec–Jan, pp. 27–31.

(10) Seguela, J. (1982) ‘Hollywood Lave PlusBlanc’, Flammarion, Paris France.

(11) Olins, W. (1978) ‘Corporate Personality’,Mayflower Books, New York, NY.

(12) Reeves, R. (1961) ‘Reality in Advertising’,Knopf Publishing Co., New York, NY.

(13) Kapferer, J.-N. (1992) ‘Strategic BrandManagement’, Free Press, New York, NYand Kogan Page, London.

(14) Kapferer, J.-N. (1998) ‘Strategic BrandManagement’, 2nd edn, Kogan Page, NewYork, NY and London.

(15) Aaker, D. (1995) ‘Building Strong Brands’,The Free Press, New York, NY.

(16) Aaker, D. and Joachimsthaler, E. (2000)‘Brand Leadership’, The Free Press, NewYork, NY.

(17) Biel, A. (1993) ‘Converting image intoequity’, in ‘Brand Equity and Advertising’,Aaker, D. and Biel, A. (eds), LawrenceErlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, pp.67–82.

(18) Keller, K. L. (1993) ‘Conceptualizing,measuring and managing customer-basedbrand equity’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 57,No. 1, pp. 1–22.

(19) Kapferer, ref. 13 above.(20) Kapferer, ref. 14 above.(21) Aaker, ref. 5 above.(22) Churchill, G. A., Jr. (1979) ‘A paradigm for

developing better measures of marketingconstructs’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol.16, February, pp. 64–73.

(23) Freud, S. (1963) ‘Essais de Psychanalyse’,French edition, Payot, Paris, France.

(24) Sullivan, H. S. (1953) ‘The InterpersonalTheory of Psychiatry’, W. W. Norton &Company, Inc., New York, NY.

(25) Allport, G. W. (1937) ‘Personality: aPsychological Interpretation’, Henry Holt &Co., New York, NY.

(26) Bloch, J., Depret, P. Gallo, F., Garnier, H.,Ginesfe, F. Leconte, B., Le Ny, A., Postel,C., Reutilin, X. and Casalis, G. (1997)‘Dictionnaire Fondamental de laPsychologie’, Larousse-Bordas, Paris, France.



perspectives on the question of brandpersonality’, Advances in Consumer Research,Vol. 22, pp. 391–395.

(60) Aaker, ref. 5 above.(61) Caprara et al., ref. 6 above.(62) Aaker, ref. 5 above.(63) Ferrandi, J.-M., Fine-Falcy, S. and

Valette-Florence, P. (1999) ‘L’echelle depersonnalite des marques de Aakerappliquee au contexte français: Un premiertest’, Actes de l’A.F.M., May.

(64) Koebel, M.-N. and Ladwein, R. (1999)‘L’echelle de personnalite de la marque deJennifer L. Aaker: Adaptation au contextefrançais’, Decisions Marketing, No. 16,pp. 81–88.

(65) Aaker, J. L., Benet-Martinez, V. andGarolera, J. (2001) ‘Consumption symbolsas carriers of culture: A study of Japanese,Spanish and North American brandpersonality dimensions’, Marketing ScienceInstitute working paper No. 01-113.

(66) Costa and McCrae, ref. 39 above.(67) Costa and McCrae, ref. 40 above.(68) Rolland, J.-P. (1993) ‘Validite de construct

de marqueurs des dimensions depersonnalite du modele en cinq facteurs’,Revue Europeenne de Psychologie Appliquee,Vol. 43, No. 4, pp. 317–337.

(69) Aaker, ref. 5 above.(70) Ibid.(71) Allport, ref. 25 above.(72) Bloch et al. ref. 26 above.(73) Churchill, ref. 22 above.(74) McCrae, R. and Costa, P. T. (1985)

‘Updating Norman’s ‘‘adequate taxonomy’’:Intelligence and the personality dimensionsin natural language and in questionnaires’,Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,Vol. 49, No. 3.

(75) Levy, ref. 3 above.(76) Ibid.(77) Kapferer, ref. 13 above.(78) Kapferer, ref. 14 above.(79) Davies, G., Chun, R. and Vinhas da Silva,

R. (2001) ‘The personification metaphor asa measurement approach for corporatereputation’, Corporate Reputation Review, Vol.4, No. 2, pp. 113–127.

(80) Kapferer, ref. 13 above.(81) Kapferer, ref. 14 above.(82) Aaker, ref. 5 above.(83) Romaniuk, J. and Ehrenberg, A. (2003)

‘Do brands lack personality?’, MarketingScience Centre research report no. 14, May,University of South Australia.

(84) Churchill, ref. 22 above.

(42) Goldberg, L. R. (1981) ‘Language andindividual differences: The search foruniversals in personality lexicons’, inWheeler, L. (ed.) ‘Review of Personalityand Social Psychology’, Vol. 2, pp.141–165, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA.

(43) Cattel, ref. 28 above.(44) Cattel, ref. 28 above.(45) Norman, ref. 32 above.(46) Eysenck, H. J. (1960) ‘The Structure of

Human Personality’, Methuen, London.(47) Guilford, J. P. (1975) ‘Factors and factors of

personality’, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 82,pp. 802–814.

(48) Wiggins, J. S. (1980) ‘Circumplex models ofinterpersonal behavior in clinicalpsychology’, in Wheeler, L. (ed.) ‘Reviewof Personality and Social Psychology’, Vol.1, pp. 265–294, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA.

(49) Tupes and Christal, ref. 31 above.(50) Eysenck, H. J. (1991) ‘Dimensions of

personality: 16, 5, or 3? Criteria for ataxonomic paradigm’, Personality andIndividual Differences, Vol. 13, No. 6,pp. 667–673.

(51) Goldberg, ref. 37 above.(52) Saucier, G. (1994) ‘Mini-markers: A brief

version of Goldberg’s unipolar big fivemarkers’, Journal of Personality Assessment,Vol. 63, No. 3, pp. 506–516.

(53) Saucier, ref. 52 above.(54) Aaker, ref. 5 above.(55) Caprara, G. V., Barbaranelli, C. and Guido,

G. (1998) ‘Personality as metaphor:Extension of the psycholexical hypothesisand the five factor model to brand andproduct personality description’, in Englis,B. and Olafsson, A. (eds) ‘EuropeanAdvances in Consumer Research’, Vol. III,Association for Consumer Research, Provo,IT.

(56) Ferrandi, J.-M. and Valette-Florence, P.(2002) ‘Premier test et validation de latransposition d’une echelle de personnalitehumaine aux marques’, Recherche etApplication en Marketing, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp.21–40.

(57) Plummer, J. T. (1984–85) ‘How personalitymakes a difference’, Journal of AdvertisingResearch, Vol. 24, Dec–Jan, pp. 27–31.

(58) Fournier, S. (1998) ‘Consumers and theirbrands: Developing relationship theory inconsumer research’, Journal of ConsumerResearch, Vol. 24, pp. 343–373.

(59) Aaker, J. L., Fournier, S., Allen, D. E.and Olson, J. (1995) ‘A brand as acharacter, a partner and a person: Three



Documents

Do Brand Personalityscales Really Measure Brand Personality