An Integrative Model of

Brand Personality, Self–Concept and Consumer Personality Orientations

Ben Webb and John Gountas, La Trobe University, Australia

Abstract

Aaker (1997) developed a robust and reliable brand personality inventory, which is
hypothesised to be generalisable across brand categories and it broadly reflects consumer
personality characteristics. Aaker’s brand personality is not anchored to any particular
personality theory and does not relate to any particular personality inventory. Brand
personality generates descriptive information about the brand perceptions but it is not very
informative of the kind of consumer that is likely to relate to the five-brand personality traits.
This paper attempts to identify relationships between Aaker’s brand personality and
consumer’s specific personality traits. Consumer’s self-concept is also intrinsically linked
with brand and consumer personality characteristics. This paper tests the triangular
relationships between the constructs of self-concept, and consumer and brand personality
traits. The empirical research findings suggest that there is a link between consumer’s
personality, brand personality and consumer’s self-concept.

Brand Personality

The premise that brands have anthropomorphic characteristics that ascribe specific human like
personality traits is widely acknowledged in the literature (Schiffman et al, 2001; Aaker et al,
2004). The research on brand personality suggests that consumers select brands that are
congruent with their needs and personality characteristics. Brand characteristics tend to be
similar with consumer’s self-concept and personality traits, therefore behaviour choices are
predictable if marketers identify consumer’s self-images and brand perceptions. Aaker’s
(1997: 347) definition of brand personality is a collection of isomorphic characteristics with
human personality traits. Aaker (1997) developed a reliable and generalisable brand
personality construct, which has been tested with a number of product categories in the USA.
The overall Aaker brand personality inventory structure and conceptualisation is original and
bears no resemblance to Five Factor Inventory (FFI or the “Big Five” personality trait model)
(Norman, 1963; Goldberg, 1990, 1993; McCrae and Costa, 1997). It is widely accepted that
many personality inventories that have been used for research on branding issues have been
directly imported from general psychology or have been developed in an ad hoc manner
(Kassarjian, 1971; Aaker, 1997), and their usefulness are somewhat limited in predicting
consumer choices (Plummer, 1985). The Aaker brand personality inventory has been
developed to measure brand characteristics only without any connection to consumer
personality characteristics. The Aaker brand personality inventory has demonstrated
empirically psychometric rigour and therefore it is a valid and reliable instrument.
However, the brand personality inventory is not related to any particular personality inventory
and there are no direct associations between consumer personality and brand personality
(Aaker, Kumar and Day, 2004; Aaker, Garolera and Benet-Martinez, 2001). Freling and
Forbes (2005) found that brands with strong personalities are likely to generate positive
attitudes with consumers, which are likely to result in evaluations that are more favourable.
Strong positive brand personalities are more likely to be associated and contribute more
towards the creation of a distinctive brand identity with a clearer market position. Freling and
Forbes suggest that brand personality could differentiate and create competitive advantage in
the consumer’s minds for brands that otherwise are indistinguishable from their competitors.
Brand equity is more likely to be stronger for brands that are clearly distinguished and
differentiated in crowded consumer markets (Lovelock, 1984; Keller, 1993). Effective market
segmentation and communication strategies would be possible if brand personality
characteristics could be anchored with specific consumer market traits and other individual
consumer psychometric characteristics, such as, self-concept. Identifying congruity
relationships between brand image and consumer’s self-image would enable marketers to
position and promote products more effectively with the appropriate target markets.
Identifying more clearly symbolic brand personality meanings, consumer personality
characteristics and the interrelationships between consumer self-image and brand image,
would provide an integrated nomothetic approach to understanding the symbolic with the
actual consumer needs. Understanding the relationships between brand and consumer
personality would prove most invaluable, as personality constructs, are considered stable over
a long timer and universally generalisable for all individuals and transcend cultural
differences (Jung, 1921/1971; McCrae and Costa, 1997). Brand meaning and personality is
found to transcend cultural boundaries and therefore coupled with consumer personality
characteristics would be a valuable combination for marketing strategy purposes for all kinds
of brands globally (Aaker and Schmitt, 2001; Escalas and Bettman, 2005).Thus the following
hypothesis is proposed.

H1: Specific brand personality characteristics are positively related to consumer’s

personality characteristics.

Self Concept and Brand Self-congruity

The use of personality as a predictor of self-congruity seems a natural extension of the self-
concept/Self-congruity theory because both constructs are closely related to each other
(Markus and Nurius, 1986; Schiffman et al, 2001). According to Pervin and John (2001), self-
concept is often viewed as a component of personality. A number of researchers have
suggested that there is a positive association between self-concept and brand image (Levy,
1959; Sirgy 1982; Sirgy and Su, 2000; Sirgy, Grewal and Mangleburg, 2000; Johar and Sirgy,
1991). Self-concept is hypothesised to consist of four components, actual self-concept, ideal
self-concept, social self-concept and ideal social self-concept (Schiffman et al., 2001). Within
this framework, actual self-concept refers to the present way in which individuals perceive
themselves (reality), whereas the ideal self-concept represents the manner in which they
would like to perceive themselves. Social self-concept represents the way individuals believe
others perceive them, while ideal social self-concept represents the way the individual desires
to be perceived by others.
Self-congruity represents the degree of similarity between consumer’s self-image or self-
concept and that of brand. The degree of consistency between the self-image and brand image
is self-congruity (Sirgy, 1982). The four aspects of self-concept compose the global self-
image, which is hypothesised to influence consumer choices of products/brands through self-
image with brand image congruity (Johar and Sirgy, 1991; Sirgy and Su, 2000). There is no
clear position or evidence of whether ideal self-image is related to ideal product image and
social self-image with social aspects of brand personality. Sirgy and Su (2000) suggest that
consumers purchase product/brands that possess images or indicate specific types of either
actual or aspiration brand images that are congruent with consumers multiplicity of self
images, either actual or ideal ones. Congruity impacts are desirable because they influence
positively consumer’s self-image, but inconsistencies or incongruity is likely to result in
feelings of inadequacy, and dissatisfied with their choices (Johar and Sirgy, 1991; Sirgy and
Su, 2000). However, Kleijnen et al (2005) suggest that there is very little difference between
actual and ideal self-image and therefore the measurement of congruence with brand images
is very small and almost negligible. Bandura (1999) suggests that multiple conceptions of self
cannot exist simultaneously, because it would require some sort of overseer self, enabling the
management and coordination of the various selves, to determine which of the four aspects of
self-image should engage with specific brand choice context. Therefore the overall or global
self-concept is not truly divided into clear and independent separate segments, but rather there
is a ‘core self’, which is able to determine appropriate modes of behaviour according to
situational contexts and demands. Due to the conceptual criticisms, the multidimensional self-
concept perspective is reconceptualised into a unifying and integrative single global self-
concept. Global self-concept integrates all four self-concept component but it permits the
measurement of the distinctive individual components of the construct as well. The proposed
hypothesis is that:

H2: Global self-concept as a multidimensional construct, (entailing the four components

of actual self-concept, ideal self-concept, social self-concept and ideal social self-
concept) is positively related to brand image and consumer personality image.

Methodology

The research attempts to test the relationships between brand personality characteristics,
consumer’s self image and consumer’s personality orientations. The context that has been
chosen is fashion clothes items that consumers have bought recently. There are no specific
instructions about the price levels, distribution outlets or type of clothing as long as they are
considered to be relevant to the young consumer’s (students) self image. A purposive
convenience sampling method was used to achieve a sample size of N=232 consumers. The
sample is predominantly composed of young adults studying in a Victorian university with an
average age of 22 years old, including 60% females and 40% males. The reasons for the
choosing students in our sample are because they are mostly young age, tend to be fashion
conscious and there is a strong likelihood that these type of consumers are more likely to
choose carefully clothing items. From our qualitative research the findings suggest that young
student consumes tend to be more concerned with self-image and brand image issues than any
other age groups. The survey questionnaire instrument was developed based on the literature
review and qualitative research findings. Aaker’s (1997) brand personality factors were tested
during the focus groups and depth interviews and were adapted to suit the young target
markets. The researchers tried to take into consideration the research context of buying
fashionable clothing brands. The research instrument used thirty-six adjectives to describe all
relevant brand personality factors and was scored as dichotomous items. The consumer
personality items are taken from the Tourism Preferences Survey instrument developed by
Gountas and Gountas (2001) and Gountas (2003). Small adaptations were made to suit the
context of brand purchasing and demographic characteristics of the study. The personality
orientations instrument contained thirty-two items which were scored on a five point Likert
scale.
 Data Analysis and Research Findings

The brand personality items were scored on a dichotomous scale of yes or no and therefore
the factor analysis produced meaningful groupings of personality factors but the Cronbach
Alphas are consequently very low. The five personality factors obtained are similar to Aaker’s
factors but there are some small differences (trendy-sophisticated, adventurous-exciting,
plain-budget, rugged-masculine, intelligent-functional). The adapted four personality
orientations (Gountas, 2003) produced four factors with low to reasonable Cronbach Alphas:
Thinking (a=.69), Feeling (a=.70), Imaginative (a=.613) and Physical/sensing (a=.64). The
overall global self-concept composite factor produced a very strong Cronbach Alpha (a=.80).
The hypotheses were tested effectively by using structural equation modelling with three
endogenous constructs, consumer personality orientation, brand personality and global self-
concept (see Figure 1).

Consumer’s
Personality

Global Self- Brand

Concept Personality

Figure 1: Integrated Self-brand Congruency Model consisting of three constructs,

consumer’s personality orientation, global self-concept and brand personality

All three endogenous constructs are interrelated and therefore all hypotheses are tested
simultaneous. Each of the individual four personality orientations is tested separately with
their respective brand personality items and global self-concept factor. The four micro-models
of each personality orientation produced reasonable fit indices and therefore both research
hypotheses are supported for all four micro-models (see Table 1).
All four micro-model fit indices are positive and above the recommended thresholds,
therefore the results suggest that all hypothesised relationships are positive and that there is a
direct effect between personality orientation, brand personality and global self-concept. The
CMIN/DE scores for all four micro-models are within the acceptable limits, and the CFI, TLI
and RMSEA suggest that the hypothesised model fits the survey data well. The structural
equations models suggest that overall the physical personality orientation micro-model
performs better and the fit indices are better that all other models. The physical/sensing
personality orientation is associated with materialistic values and material possessions and
therefore it makes logical sense to be strongly related and therefore it can be used as a
predictor variable with regards to purchasing goods and brands with symbolic (material
wealth and aesthetic) value.
 Table 1: Structural Equation Model Fit indices of the four integrated micro-
models of personality orientations, brand personality and global self-concept
constructs
Personality CMIN/DE P CFI GFI AGFI TLI RMSEA
orientation (acceptable (levels (acceptabl (acceptab (accepta (acceptable (acceptable
levels: 1-3) ≤.05) e levels le levels ble levels ≤.90) levels ≥.070)
≤.90) ≤.90) levels
≤.90)
Imaginative 1.40 0.005 0.925 .952 .932 0.909 0.042
Feeling 1.38 0.020 0.957 .943 .914 0.943 0.041
Thinking 1.197 0.087 0.965 .937 .910 0.968 0.029
Physical 1.164 .180 .979 .956 .933 .973 0.027

Discussion and Implications for Marketers

The research findings support the reliability of the Aaker brand personality instrument and the
Gountas four personality orientations. The rather weak Cronbach Alphas are possibly due to
the adaptation choices and the type of sample that was selected. The adaptation of any
psychometric instrument needs to be carried out very carefully and be tested rigorously to fit
well the new research context. Austin et al. (2003) tested Aaker’s brand personality
instrument with young age consumer samples and suggest that there are limitations to the
degree of generalisability of the instrument. They argue that the context and the product
category may produce different effects and therefore researchers should use the Aaker brand
personality instrument with care. The symbolic brand image is different according to the
product category and the demographic characteristics of the consumers. This paper attempted
to adapt appropriately the Aaker instrument and used a simplified scoring method with some
success but it requires further research to establish whether there are cross-cultural differences
that influence the results (Quester et al., 2000). The combination of brand personality,
consumer personality and self-concept produces more comprehensive understanding of the
possible reasons for which consumers choose different brands. The combined information
from all three constructs enables marketers to develop more valid brand positioning strategies.
Promotional and distribution strategies are more likely to be effective because the brands
attributes and overall image reflect more reliably the consumer’s characteristics and needs.
Future research should endeavour to improve the factor structure of the adapted brand
personality, and personality orientations for the specific product/brand categories. More
attention is required with the sample selection and the scoring methods of individual brand
personality items. Overall, the research makes an original theoretical contribution because it
successfully linked brand personality with consumer personality characteristics and identified
that there is very little discriminant validity between the four components of self-image. The
postulation of a global self-image construct that is composed of all four facets (actual, ideal,
social, ideal social self- image) makes a lot of sense based on our research results and with the
consumer’s self-perceptions during the qualitative research.
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