Development of brand personality measure: An application for Vietnamese context

Le Thi Minh Hang^a , Bao Quoc Truong-Dinh^b*

^aDepartment of Business Administration, University of Economics, The University of Danang, Vietnam.

^b*Department of Marketing, University of Economics, The University of Danang, Vietnam.Corresponding author's email address: baotdq@due.edu.vn

Keywords: Brand personality, brand personality scale, brand personality measure, scale development, Vietnamese

ARTICLE HISTORY: Received:22-Jan-2018 , Accepted: 09-Apr-2018, Online available:25-Apr-2018

Contribution/ Originality

This study is one of a few studies apply new thinking to define brand personality that just contains the human personality traits only. This study also the first study tries to validate the scale for brand personality for Vietnamese context. The scale was tested in diversity brands with different consumption situations. The scale contributes to both academics and practitioners.

1. INTRODUCTION

Consumer behavior is a complicated area and takes many attentions from the academy and practice in marketing. Consumers buy a product or brand is not merely based on the utility of itself, but on so base on the "invisible" values from them. Following the development of science and technology in recent years, the difference in physical product attributes is no more competitive advantage. Thus, the symbolic values of brand prove their important role in the success of brands. Brand personality that is considered as an important factor in creating symbolic values (added-value) for brands need to be concentrated.

Although the topic of building the brand personality scales has emerged in recent years, however, the result showed the inconsistency, particularly in the replicability of the factors among different cultures. In addition to that, Vietnam after the implementation of the 'opening and reform' policy in 1991 has become a fast-growing economy in the last 20 years. With the increase in the spending of the consumer, Vietnam welcomes more foreign companies to have business in its market lead to the advertising activities also consequently growth. Thus, these brands increase their marketing activities, particularly in building a brand personality for their brands. However, lack of research in Vietnam concentrates on testing or building a brand personality for Vietnamese culture perspective.

Since Aaker's (1997) seminal paper, the field of brand personality has rapidly grown in various sectors, such as tangible products, service, company, retail channel, etc. The criticisms around Aker's definition of brand personality still raise a big question about the ability to replicate her scale of brand personality in many different countries and product categories (Ambroise and Valette-Florence, 2010; Azoulay and Kapferer, 2003). The main concern is the debate among academics about should or should not involve other characteristics beyond the personality traits in brand personality scales. In this paper, we agree with the pure brand personality definition of psychologists that is the "set of personality traits" only (McCrae and Costa, 1987) without other characteristics. In addition, previous studies about brand personality scale in Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, and China) showed the inconsistency result in the dimensions of scales (Aaker et al., 2001; Chu and Sung, 2011; Kim et al., 2001). Thus, a total replication of these scales that majority used Aaker's model is not convinced.

In sum, this paper aims to return to the basic definition of brand personality and develop a brand personality scale for Vietnamese context based on the rigorous definition of brand personality that excludes all non-personality items. In our knowledge, this study is the first study in Vietnam tries to build a brand personality scales in the Vietnamese context.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

This section developed two points. The first aims to define the concept of brand personality and the importance of measuring brand personality by using personality items only. The second is to review the different versions of brand personality scales in recent years.

2.1. Brand personality definition

Aaker's (Aaker, 1997) definition of brand personality is "the set of human characteristics associated with the brand." Aaker's definition is the first definition of brand personality. However, it is subject to many criticisms, particularly regarding its overly vague and "catch-all" character (Azoulay and Kapferer, 2003). Aaker defined personality in terms of characteristics instead of traits; this definition is opposite with the psychologist definition of personality that purely contains trait only. Psychologist defines the substance of personality as "the systematic description of traits" (McCrae and Costa, 1987), where traits are "relatively enduring styles of thinking, feeling, and acting" (McCrae and Costa, 1997). The significant achievement of researchers on the taxonomy of human personality, consensus rests upon the five dimension of the Big-Five model that provides a competence of personality: Extraversion or Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability versus Neuroticism, and Openness or Intellect (John and Srivastava, 1999).

Aaker started from Big-Five items, but completed them with, amongst other things, social-demographic characteristics (Geuens et al., 2009). Whereas Big-Five researchers deliberately exclude gender and social class (McCrae and Costa, 1997), Aaker (1997) includes the feminine, upper class, young, etc. in her scale. Other researchers adopted Aaker's definition also prove that not all their items are real personality traits and came up with the items such as good-looking, healthy, old, new, heavy, and big (Sung and Tinkham, 2005), or cost-effective and financially stable (Venable et al., 2005).

Besides the criticisms on "too wide and loose" definition, brand personality definition of Aaker still contains validity problems and leaves researchers and practitioners uncertain of what they actually measured: the perceived brand personality (a sender aspect) or perceived users characteristics (receiver aspects) (Geuens et al., 2009). Brand personality forms a major component of brand identity. Kapferer (2008) developed a brand identity prism that considers brand as a speech following from a sender to a receiver. Kapferer (2008) argues that the brand identity dimensions of physique (i.e., physical features, and qualities) and personality (i.e., human personality traits) picture the sender. The identity dimensions of reflection (i.e., image of the target group) and self-image (i.e., how the brand makes consumer feel) depict the receiver. The dimension of culture (i.e., values) and relationship (i.e., mode of conduct) from a bridge between the sender and receiver. Konecnik and Go (2008) prove that most researchers agree the opinion that brand identity (and brand personality) is best understood from the sender-side and brand image from the receiver-side perspective. For example, user imagery often is not often the same as brand personality (Keller, 2008). Plummer (2000) found that consumers perceive the stereotypical user of Oil of Olay as "a pretty, down-to-earth, solid, female citizen," whereas the brand personality of Oil of Olay is more upscale and aspirational. Aaker's scale mixes up sender and receiver aspects and embraces a mix of the different identity concepts. For instance, Aaker and Joachimsthaler (2012)'s model showed that the mixing up 'the brand as a product' with 'the brand as a symbol.'

Azoulay and Kapferer (2003) argue that it is important to make a distinction between sender and receiver and each of composing elements of brand identity in both theoretical and practical measurement instruments. Consider to Kapferer's identity prism (2008), Aaker scales also pertains to inner values (culture), physical traits (physique), and typical user characteristics (reflection) (Azoulay and Kapferer, 2003). The researcher of this study accept the definition of brand personality is "the unique set of human personality traits both applicable and relevant to brands" (Azoulay and Kapferer, 2003).

2.2. Brand personality dimensions

Aaker (1997) developed a theoretical framework of brand personality dimensions including Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness presents an important step for marketing researchers to examine symbolic meanings of brands. Comparing with five dimensions of the Big-Five model, there are three dimensions in Aaker (1997) five-factor structure of brand personality. Sincerity taps into traits of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Excitement includes items like Extraversion such as sociability, energy, and activity. Competence contains the trait items that can find in Conscientiousness and Extraversion. The other two dimensions, Sophistication, and Ruggedness, do not relate to any Big-Five dimensions.

After Aaker, many empirical studies replicate her framework across cultures. However, the result showed inconsistency in the result, particularly in Asia countries that appear many new dimensions (table 1). In addition, the majority showed they fail to replicate all five dimensions of the Big-Five model. This result is not too surprising since most of them use Aaker's broad definition of brand personality. However, Caprara et al. (2001) and Ferrandi and Valette-Florence (2002) are some few researchers try to build a brand personality scale that can replicate the Big-Five model of human personality. Only Ferrandi and Valette-Florence (2002) successfully replicate a Big-Five model in building brand personality scale in the French context.

Considering the all the factor structures in table 1, it is marked that some of the dimensions that related to Big-Five model appear more often than other dimensions. Extraversion or Introversion appears 6 times as a pure dimension and Conscientiousness 9 times. Agreeableness shows up in eight studies and Openness emerge as a pure dimension in 6 studies, and Emotional stability two studies. In majority studies, the dimensions emerge that consist of a mix of items belong to two Big-Five dimensions or split from one Big-Five dimension. The dimensions (Sophistication, Ruggedness, White collar, Western and Androgyny) that do not show an affinity with the Big Five dimension do not contain any trait.

In sum, the loose brand personality definition includes a construct validity problem and leads to brand personality dimensions that do not cover the personality traits. This studies develop a brand personality based on the personality traits only and take the definition of Azoulay and Kapferer (2003) as a foundation. We expected to find a scale could replicate all five dimension of the Big-Five model.

Table 1: Resemblance of brand dimensions to big five dimensions (revised from Geuens et al., 2009)

Note: Letters between parentheses in the third column refer to the Big Five dimensions: E=Extraversion, A=Agreeableness, C=Conscientiousness, ES=Emotional Stability, and O=Openness

3. METHODOLOGY

This study agrees with the definition of brand personality is "the set of human personality traits both applicable and relevant to brands" (Azoulay and Kapferer, 2003) and exclude all characteristics related to social, functional attributes, demographic characteristics user imagery, brand attitudes, etc. We begin to build a scale for brand personality based on the selection of personality traits from the human personality. Thus, this research chooses the human personality Mini-Makers (short version of Big-Five) scales of Saucier (1994) to develop the brand personality scale in the Vietnamese context. We chose the Mini-Marker scale because (1) this scale was developed from the original scale of Goldberg (1992) and (2) original scale with 100 items is too long and creates respondent fatigue. The Mini-Marker scales showed the consisting with original scale in gathering the traits into 5 dimensions and was verified in other studies (Dwight et al., 1998; Palmer and Loveland, 2004). In addition, the shorter version supports the respondent to answer the questionnaire faster, reduce their tiredness. Next, we translated the Mini-Maker scale by using back translation approach. Two English experts individually translated 40 items from English to Vietnamese and worked together to deliver a final Vietnamese version. The same process was applied to translate back from Vietnamese to English. We compared two versions and consulted with English experts to have a final version of Vietnamese Mini-Marker scale. Human personality has naturally both positive and negative traits. Thus, the Mini-Makers scale also contains 20 positive and 20 negative personality traits.

After that, we ask 16 marketing experts to help us evaluate 40 items in the ability to apply for a brand base on the 9-point Likert scales (from totally cannot apply for a brand to totally can apply for the brand). The result (table 2) showed that majority negative traits and positive traits divide into two groups. These positive traits have the higher mean score than negative traits (with the highest mean score of a negative trait is 3.25). However, there are two traits exchange their position, "quiet" move to the positive group and "talkative" move to negative group. This results from the changing in the meaning of these traits when translating to Vietnamese. In Vietnamese culture, "quiet" refers to "gentle, calm" is a prefer personality trait of human, and "talkative" refers to "talking too much" is the opposite one. Finally, we chose 20 positive items that had a higher evaluation from the experts to use in our study. This result is not surprising because companies often build their brand with positive traits rather than negative (Aaker, 1997; Aaker and Fournier, 1995).

Table 2: The result of selection personality traits (items)

3.2. Selection of brands

Previous authors on brand personality argued that brand personality scale need to test in the group of brands with the various product category. These brands need to represent all brands in the market and gain knowledge from respondents. Customers evaluate brand through consumption situation, thus we selected products for this study following the classification of Graeff (1997) consumption situations. Following this classification, there are three kinds of brands including brands belong to private consumption situation, brands belong to public consumption situation and brand can use for both situations.

We ran a preliminary research to ask respondents rate their opinion about 40 different products, give a brand for each product, and divide it into three groups of consumption situation. Respondents answer three questions: which product are you using now? Give a brand for each product, and which situation do you use this product? The third question used 9-points Likert scale from 'totally use in private situation' to 'totally use in public situation.' We chose two products for each privacy and public situation, and four products for both situations. With each product, we chose two brands; therefore, there are totally 16 brands in this study (table 3).

Table 3: List of selected brands

3.3. Participants and procedure

We delivered 3200 questionnaires for 16 different brands (200 questionnaires for each) that involved in this study. We used convenience sampling to collect the data from the student of Danang University. The sample after the data collection is 2465 students (undergraduate, graduate, and part-time students, 49.7 % male, and 50.3 female) from 17 to 47 years old. The questionnaire includes 2 main parts: respondents evaluate the personality of one brand, and some demographic data will be collected. Each respondent rated one brand on each of the 20 items using 9-point Likert scales (1= totally agree, 9= totally disagree). Only the participants who indicated knowledge of the brand qualified to proceed with the questionnaire.

4. RESULT

4.1. Exploratory factor analysis

We first employed exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to purify scale because (1) the main focus of this stage to identify the underlying structure of brand personality dimensions and (2) the analysis of this stage is the truly exploratory procedure. We purposed to find a replicate Big-Five scale; thus, we fixed the factors to extract in five. Each item with the factor loading lower than .4 (Aaker, 1997) was removed respectively, the result showed four items were removed (i.e., complex, extroverted, philosophical, unenvious) and the EFA was rerun (table 4).

Table 4: EFA result in brand personality dimensions (promax rotation)

4.2. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)

In the next step, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis to compare with the previous framework of brand personality and find a suitable scale with the high reliability and validity for Vietnamese context. We used the framework of Ferrandi and Valette-Florence (2002) that used Big-Five model to build a brand personality scale for French context to make a comparison. We begin the CFA test with the original framework from the result of EFA in the previous step and the framework of Ferrandi and Valette-Florence (Ferrandi and Valette-Florence, 2002). Then, we performed three adjustment frameworks based on the adjustment with the framework of Ferrandi and Valette-Florence. The result in table 5 showed the second adjustment is the best version with the CFA yielded adequate model fit (X²=824.224, p=0.000, GFI =0.950, AGFI=0.917, RMSEA=0.076). Thus, we chose the framework of the second adjustment to develop a brand personality for Vietnam. The brand personality scale contains 13 items of personality traits in five dimensions.

Table 5: CFA result for brand personality scale

4.3. Reliability and validity

We used the partial least-squares (PLS) technique to check the scale reliability and validity. The result in table 6 showed these items in each dimension have a high correlation with each other (>.5) and have a low correlation with other items belonging to other dimensions. Next, the Cronbach's alpha and Joreskog's rho calculated for each of five dimensions indicated a high level of internal reliability and discriminant validity. The bootstrap result showed the measurement model demonstrated acceptable, fit to the data (RMSEA=0.095, AGFI=0.817, GFI=0.922, Gamma=0.929, Adjusted Gamma=0.883, Khi²/ddl=975.899/55) (table 7).

Table 6: Partial least squares result for brand personality scale

Table 7: Bootstrap result of brand personality scale

To compare the brand personality dimensions of a pair competitive brand, we draw spider maps. Aaker (1997) argued that the reliability and validity of scale are reflected in the ability to recognize the difference in brand personality dimensions among different brands. The result (figure 1) showed that contains a difference between two completive brands in several dimension of brand personality framework. This result demonstrates that the brand personality scale of this study can apply to the various brands, and show the validity of this scale through many testing.

Figure 1: Comparison of five dimensions of brand personality scale between two competitive brands (Source: from this study)

5. DISCUSSION

This study attempt to build a brand personality scales for Vietnam. Starting from a definition that confines brand personality to human personality traits that are relevant for and applicable to brands, we developed a new brand personality for Vietnamese context. The Vietnamese version scale contains thirteen items and five factors (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness) (figure 2). This study's brand personality scale, to our knowledge, is the first ones in Vietnamese context and try to test in diversity consumption situation and a large number of brands. Thus, this scales promises to be a practical instrument for branding research and is important for both academics and practitioners. For academics, future branding researchers in Vietnam can apply this scale like a recommendation to develop more research related to this one. For practitioners, it is very important that the scale can be used in diversified product categories. Moreover, companies can use this study to test their brand personality and assess what degree their brands have a true brand personality.

Figure 2: Brand personality measure in the Vietnamese context

By adopting a restricted definition of brand personality and develop a scale from human personality traits. We developed a brand personality scale in Vietnamese context that replicates a Big-Five model and showed the consistency with human personality scale. This study creates a foundation and opens the opportunities for more research in measurement the congruency between human and brand.

However, this study is not without limitations. Frist, we apply a Mini-markers scale with 20 items to support our data collection. Thus it is possible that we missed useful and meaningful items because they were not associated with one of the dimensions. Future research can apply a full scale of Goldberg (1992) and to retest a validity of the scale. Second, although we tested the scale on a large number of brands (16 brands) and several product types, this is not all the brand in Vietnam market, future research may try to extend sample of brands. Future research may test the scale in different areas of Vietnam, not just in Danang city of this study and use other characteristics of specific target groups (demographic, culture, goals, genders, etc.)

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