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AUDREY AZOULAY
is a doctoral candidate at HEC Graduate School of Management (Paris).
JEAN-NOËL 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.
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Constructed source
Externalisation
Internalisation
Physical Personality
facet
Relationship Culture
(values)
Reflected Consumer
consumer
mentalisation
Constructed receiver
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sonality’ — the meanings of which are being, in his/her way to react to the situa-
then manifold — the first psychologist tions in which s/he is.
who constructed a personality theory In most cases, the word does not include
was Freud. Most important is that the cognitive aspects of the behavior (intel-
Freud23 and his disciples considered ligence, abilities, knowledge). It always deals
with the affective, emotional and dynamic
personality to be something dynamic,
aspects. Personality is [more often than not]
cumulative, but, above all, they viewed described in terms of traits.’
it as being durable and relatively stable
over time. The research of Sullivan24
follows the same lines, especially con- Personality is a clear construct different
cerning the definition of personality. from cognitive aspects of the person, or
Indeed, Sullivan thought that: from his or her skills and abilities. It is
described by traits.
‘Personality could be defined only in terms The theory of traits is crucial to
of the reactions . . . of an individual towards personality theory insofar as it has
other people in recurrent interpersonal situa- enabled the practical application of the
tions in life. He called the smallest unit of
theory of personality, the construction
recurrent reactions dynamism. He used that
word to describe certain patterns of feelings
of personality scales, and the identifica-
or behaviour . . . and also to describe entities tion of the corpus of words that define
or mechanisms that are the components of personality. As Allport27 described it, a
the personality . . . Those dynamisms are trait is ‘a generalized and focalized
quite enduring and accumulate throughout neuropsychic system (peculiar to the
life.’ individual), with the capacity to render
many stimuli functionally equivalent,
This definition is quite vague, but it and to initiate and guide consistent
gave way to the trait theory. The (equivalent) forms of adaptive and
importance of defining the concept of expressive behavior’. The researchers
personality is crucial insofar as it will in the 1930s to 1950s focused more on
influence the theory that will ensue. the construction of an exhaustive and
When trying to write a book devoted representative list of all the terms of the
to explaining what personality really language that could possibly describe
is, Allport25 wrote an entire chap- the personality, than on the search
ter entitled ‘Defining personality’. In for a perfect definition of the con-
this chapter, he reviewed 49 defini- cept. That research (including that of
tions before giving one of his own. Cattel28) is the basis of the current
This book is a remarkable effort to popular personality theories. The study
define this field of study. The defini- of personality by a lexical approach
tions reviewed have common points dates back to the 1920s in Germany
that can be found in Allport’s defini- and the 1930s in the USA. It has since
tion. The ‘Dictionnaire Fondamental been developed in various countries,
de la Psychologie’26 summarises this but the US and German studies remain
research and these definitions: the central ones in the field.
The first exhaustive published list of
‘[Personality is the] set of relatively stable terms present in the English dictionary
and general dynamic, emotional and affec- related to personality and was prepared
tive characteristics of an individual’s way of by Allport and Odbert29 in 1936 (they
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AZOULAY AND KAPFERER
listed 18,000 terms). Most studies fol- accepted. The five dimensions are
lowing that of Cattel30 have converged often (but not always) labelled
towards the conclusion that human OCEAN:
personality could be ‘summarised’ by a
small number of factors (from two to — Dimension O: Openness to new ex-
16). A large number of studies have periences, to imagination and in-
reached the number five.31–40 tellectual curiosity. This dimension
The reduction in the number of gathers such elements as the inten-
items has been made on the basis of a sity, span and complexity of an
relevancy criterion: the terms that have individual’s experiences.
been taken out are those which are — Dimension C: Conscientiousness.
judged obscure, ambiguous or collo- This dimension gathers such traits
quial, and those that are judgmental or as scrupulousness, orderliness and
that introduce a gender distinction. The trustworthiness.
factors are the result of factor analysis, — Dimension E: Extraversion. This
most of the time with a varimax dimension gathers such traits as
rotation. As Digman41 explains in his openness to others, sociability, im-
literature review, Goldberg42 too has pulsivity and likeability to feel
observed the robustness of the five- positive emotions.
factor model, independently of the — Dimension A: Agreeableness. This
results of Cattel.43 He even thinks that dimension includes such traits
these five broad factors or dimensions as kindness, modesty, trust and
can form a framework within which to altruism.
organise and structure the personality — Dimension N: Neuroticism. An in-
concept as it has been studied by dividual is said to be neurotic if
researchers such as Cattel,44 Norman,45 they are not emotionally stable.
Eysenck,46 Guilford47 and Wiggins.48 This dimension includes such traits
The five dimensions reflect an in- as anxiety, instability and nervous-
dividual’s stable and recurrent traits, as ness.
opposed to temporary states that are not
taken into consideration in the descrip- Some researchers have shown that
tion of an individual personality. each of the five dimensions could
Goldberg’s results are supported by be represented by a small number
another piece of research, which of adjectives that are representative
analyses six studies, and shows the enough of the dimension they load on.
robustness of the model unveiled by In other words, these adjectives have a
Tupes and Christal,49 with five factors high loading on one dimension and a
labelled the ‘Big Five’ by Goldberg. low (or close to 0) loading on
The number of dimensions is, other dimensions. These adjectives are
however, not confirmed by all named ‘markers’ of the Big Five
researchers. Some of them indeed note (Goldberg,51 Saucier52). They have
that the parsimonious configuration of been developed to reduce the length of
the Big Five model has weaknesses (see questionnaires and to avoid respon-
Eysenck50 for example). dents’ fatigue. This method enables a
Despite critiques, the Big Five psychologist to form a quick evaluation
theory or five-factor model is widely of an individual. Saucier’s53 40 mini-
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Table 1 Aaker’s brand personality scale and the psychological five factors model
Saucier’s 40 Openness (or intellect) (***) Creative, imaginative, intellectual, philosophical, deep,
mini-markers complex, uncreative, unintellectual
Conscientiousness Efficient, organised, systematic, practical, disorganised,
inefficient, sloppy, careless
Extraversion Bold, extraverted, talkative, bashful, quiet, shy, withdrawn,
energetic
Agreeableness Kind, sympathetic, warm, cooperative, cold, unsympathetic,
harsh, rude
Neuroticism Unenvious, relaxed, fretful, envious, jealous, moody, touchy,
(or Emotional Stability) temperamental
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before, early practitioners took the included in the definition, and what is
concept of brand personality to have a excluded . . . Researchers should have
global, extended meaning. In this way, good reasons for proposing additional
the concept covers a variety of separate new measures given the many available
constructs: the personality itself, but for most marketing constructs of inter-
also the values, the reflection of the est’. That is why this paper has tried to
typical or stereotypical buyer, and so analyse in detail both the shortcomings
on — all different facets of brand of the existing definition and the
identity. As a consequence, many items existing scales’ ability to measure the
of the so-called brand personality scale concept of brand personality before
are in fact measuring classical dimen- proposing a new methodology.
sions of product performance. Recent The present so-called brand per-
empirical research by Romaniuk and sonality scale merges all the human
Ehrenberg83 demonstrates this point: characteristics applicable to brands un-
the authors analysed the average trait der one blanket word — ‘personality’
attributions of Aaker’s scale across 12 — thus losing the distinctiveness of the
markets and 118 brands. The brands facets of brand identity; personality
most associated with the so-called being only one of them. It is time
brand personality item ‘energetic’ are to restrict the use of the concept of
energiser drinks; the item ‘sensuous’ is brand personality to the meaning it
most associated with ice cream brands; should never have lost: ‘the unique set
and ‘up to date’ is attributed most to of human personality traits both ap-
computers and electronic equipment. plicable and relevant to brands’.
CONCLUSION Acknowledgment
This paper has received the support of
As demonstrated in this paper, the Foundation HEC.
existing measures for the construct of
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