Critical Overview of Brand Personality of Aaker - Literature review Example

?Brand Personality Table of Contents Introduction 3 Meaning of Branding 4 Aaker’s Theory of Brand Personality 6 Explanation 7 Criticism 8 Conclusion 9 References 10 Introduction Brand is a collection of image as well as perception which represents a product, corporation or service. While a number of people identify brand by the logo of the company and audio jingle, a brand is denoted as one of the largest identification elements. Brand is a concept which is set in mind as a prospect. It is nothing else than an ongoing motion in which the consumer interchange marketing value in terms of financial value, by taking the advantages of the benefit that the brand provides to their consumers. Brands may be also said as business organization; at the same time, it helps in generating revenue, thus brands can be regarded as investment. In return, brands need to payback certain amount of revenue to their owner. Brand Personality is a collection of human features connected with a specific brand (Aaker & Biel, 1993). A brand can easily come across the notice of the customer if the advertisement is done with known celebrities or with the help of certain well known figures of historic moment. Brand personality is often questionable in terms of scale and at times is answerable in theoretical conception based on nature. Once brands are developed, they shelter the company under the umbrella with numerous numbers of products, which can provide it incredible strategic advantage and financial gains. In the present market scenario, a major role is played by brand. Over a long period of time, brands have significantly controlled the performances of the marketers and have influenced the promises and the benefits provided by the brand to their consumers for that particular product (Hanasali & et. al., 2005). The paper intends to discuss branding and Aaker's brand personality with its explanation along with its criticism. Meaning of Branding A brand is fundamental by nature or is represented by its offerings and what it delivers. Brand motivates its consumers by the offerings provided by a particular company. Brands establish themselves in the market over a period of time by the means of conveying a company’s message to their customers through consistent advertisements and by following suggestions provided by friends, colleagues, by family members along with ensuring communication between its representatives and its company members. The brands are often protected from others by securing service maker or trademark by a certified agency, generally by government agency (Herford & et. al., 2007). The public knowledge about the companies brand is often set as a factor of companies’ evaluations. At times, corporations undergo market research to become aware about the public brand recognition, at the same time to know about the behaviour of the customers towards the brand. When the companies are building a brand or working upon a brand, at times they take the help of search engine and WebPages having the outline of the work details before establishing the successful brand. Organising the fields name and the brand name is an extremely vital part of searching and keeping in touch with the clients and the visitors consequently branding the new company (Asperin, 2007). Brand name helps in the identification of the image and idea of that particular service or product, which in return results in the clients to be drawn towards the new brand in the market. Branding is a procedure of building companies’ asset, which helps to build goodwill in the market. If a company is able to establish a stellar reputation among the competitors then branding procedure can help in creating an image in the market. It motivates a company to meet its expectations by bringing in more innovative service or product and to surpass its expectations in the competitive market scenario. In today’s dynamic marketplace, brands have large marketing landscape, where the ground of spreading the message and introducing the product is largely performed through the use of different media. By the ground of social media channels, the consumers have the potential to promote their personal brand. In this present market scenario, each brand is seeking to attain the perfect attention of its target audience by ensuring to provide a lucid comprehension related to the product offerings to the customers. A brand does not signify a marketing strategy (Neumeier, 2006). A brand provides an assurance through its approach to the consumers in delivering a specific desired product or service based on the acquired customer based knowledge. Brand creates a smoothen relationship between the consumer and the company (Park & et. al., 2008). A brand makes its place in the minds of the customers. Brand faithfulness relates to the bonding towards the elimination of the competitors. As observed by George, “the brand is only as good as the quality of the product. A “label” is NOT necessarily a “brand” (George, n.d.). The threat for the brands is that a brand has a distinct, clean and desirable image which is a vital matter to its customers which enables to differentiate them from rest of the other brands. A key aspect of a company’s competitive advantage along with a strategic asset is brand. Aaker had formulated a dependable and strong inventory of brand personality, which was hypothesized leading to generalized personality of brand. It was tested and conducted by the help of numerous product categories (Rakocevic, 2011). The Aaker’s dimensional scale was created in the isolated one-dimensional distinct construct (Pandey, 2009). The brand personality of Aaker’s inventory practically depicted psychometric rigor, this made the dimensional scale dependable and applicable instrument. Brand personality seeks to develop differentiation and consumers’ following in the marketplace (Aaker, 2011). Aaker’s Theory of Brand Personality Jennifer Aaker’s Dimensions of Brand Personality facilitates a procedure to measure the fascinating notion of brand personality (Close, n.d.). The main motive of Aaker’s study was to point out the brand personality that is set in them mind of the customer. After her vast study on 631 subject materials along with 37 brands and on personal selection, personality-trait procedure was used to establish a valid content. With the help of the principle as well as factor analyses components, every brand was summed up based on particular personality traits by keeping in consideration the five personality dimensions. To study the bonding between the human personality and the brand, Aaker implemented two types of brand scale personality which include ad hoc scales and the brand scale theory. The brand personality scale is the degree of study that measures the positive and negative behaviour of the consumer towards a particular brand in relation to another brand in the categories of product and service. The brand quality becomes a vital factor in order to build up the trust and good perception on the service and product. The reason behind this perception is that this judgment will help to identify the brand judgment on the quality perceived. Aaker conceptualised five dimensions of brand personality i.e. competence, sincerity, excitement, ruggedness and sophistication (Aaker, 1997). Explanation In this context, it can be observed that Aaker’s first focus was on Sincerity of the brand. The brand should be sincere towards to its customer. The product or the service provided by the brand must be very down-to-earth, the brand must be very much honest to its customers, the brand must innovate such a product or service which may easily attract it consumers by cheerfulness and wholesome positive attributes. The sincerity of customers towards a brand is an asset of a company. When a new brand is launched in the market and the promotion of the product is done with the help of a celebrity, the excitement of purchasing that particular product is very much daring which will help the brand to attract teenager consumers by a large extent along with attracting more consumers due to enhanced curiosity (Dunn, 2004). The product or the service provided by the brand must be very much up-to-date, which can satisfy the needs of the consumers. Aaker’s another focus was on competency of the brand in which the notion was that a brand must be very reliable to its customers so that they may be comfortable in using the product or the service provided by the brand. It must be very innovative by nature and it should be intelligent so that it has the capacity to satisfy its customers and become successful enough to capture the imagination of the consumers. The brand should be sophisticated in its appearance so that the product attracts upper class people and they become comfortable in purchasing and using it thus making the brand suitable to their status along with possessing the capacity of being charming (Ariff & et. al., 2012). Aaker’s dimension as well as facets also included ruggedness. The consumer perception is at times influenced by a product’s strong features and its wild appearance which enables to demonstrate toughness and outdoorsy traits to the consumers. Aaker’s implemented likert scale as a differential semantic scale in her brand personality trait measure to identify a brand’s positive as well as negative attributes that affect its brand personality (Randall, 2000). Criticism Aaker’s dimension of five scales recently received certain criticisms from several platforms. The definition has become irrelevant of brand personalities which have number of espousal and other behaviours besides personality, which induces in the construction of validity problem, where the practitioners and the researchers are not aware of what they have measured actually about the apparent brand personality or the superficial user characteristic (Aaker, 1997). Cross-cultural generalizability was a key constituent that faced criticism. In the analysis made by Aaker, the dimension of cross-cultural generalizability was not appropriately considered as the research deemed that human personality related dimensions stay the same across varied culture (Hatch & Schultz, 2008; Bejoy & Sekar, 2008). However, brand personality cannot be considered to remain the same across different cultures, which might create limitation for the scale developed by Aaker to measure the distinctive across varied cultures Number of brand identification frameworks exist in the present scenario, where most of the researchers have conveyed their point of view that the identification of the brand is known through brand image even from the sender-side. The distinction linking both the receiver and the sender, for the identification of the brand loyalty is very much important for the establishment of the brand in the market (Geuens & et. al., 2008). Brands are extremely important for the marketer and the consumer therefore brand management has become difficult day-by-day. Most of the consumers stated that they generally switch from one brand to another in three months or in more than six months (Healey, 2008). Conclusion Brands help consumers in their decision making by the assurance of standards’ and by gaining trust. The conception of branding facilitates a company to differentiate its product offerings from rest of its competitors by demonstrating its differentiating quality. In keeping with the changing trends in the dynamic business world, with the incorporation of advanced technologies that never remains the same the various brands need to keep on developing and innovating to ascertain their success and maintain their sustainability in the market. At the same time, the brands that are fulfilling their promises towards their customers by either reinventing or upholding their product quality generally get the appreciation of the customers. Certain brands often enjoy monopolistic advantages from the loyal group of customers, over a certain period of time. Due to the healthy competition in the present competitive market, customers enjoy a qualitative product or service, which in return is very profitable for the consumer. A critical profit of branding is that it helps in the identification of product requirements, which is advantageous for the marketers in making the differentiation of the product from their competitors. Therefore, it can be concluded that the perception of the brand of a company is set in the minds of the consumers. Consumers shift from one brand to another generally within one month to six months. It is recognised that Aaker’s brand personality scale assumes certain crucial brand related factors, however it was criticized by certain researchers in the present changing world with the alteration in the human wants and needs. It was recognised that these fluctuating needs were at times not considered by the brand personality dimensions such as cross-cultural generalizability aspect. References Aaker, J., 1997. Dimensions of Brand Personality. Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 34, pp. 347-357. Aaker, A. D., 2011. Building Strong Brands. Free Press. Asperin, E. A., 2007. Exploring Brand Personality Congruence: Measurement and Application in the Casual Dining Restaurant Industry. ProQuest. Aaker, A. D. & Biel, L. A., 1993. Brand Equity & Advertising: Advertising's Role in Building Strong Brands. Routledge. Ariff, M. S. B. M. & et. al., 2012. Determination of Brand Personality Dimensions for a Laptop Computer Using Aaker’s Brand Personality Scale. Review of Integrative Business & Economics, Vol. 1(1), pp 114-125. Bejoy, J. B. & Sekar, C. P., 2008. Measurement and Validity of Jennifer Aaker’s Brand Personality Scale for Colgate Brand. Multidimensional Model of Brand Personality of Colgate With Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Vol. 33, pp. 49-61. Close, A., No Date. Brand Personality. Understanding Brand Personality. [Online] Available at: http://faculty.unlv.edu/angeline/3710BrandPersonalityClose.pdf [Accessed January 07, 2013]. Dunn, D., 2004. Branding: The 6 Easy Steps. E-Agency. George, R. J., No Date. You and Your Business are Brands!!!. There Are No Such Things As Commodity Markets, Only Commodity Marketers. The Pennsylvania State University. [Online] Available at: http://agmarketing.extension.psu.edu/Retail/PDFs/branding.pdf [Accessed January 07, 2013]. Geuens, M. & et. al., 2008. A New Measure of Brand Personality. Working Paper. [Online] Available at: http://feb1.ugent.be/nl/Ondz/wp/Papers/wp_08_545.pdf [Accessed January 07, 2013]. Herford, H. C. & et. al., 2007. Brand. Wildside Press LLC. Hatch, J. M. & Schultz, M., 2008. Taking Brand Initiative: How Companies Can Align Strategy, Culture, and Identity Through Corporate Branding. John Wiley & Sons. Hanasali, F. & et. al., 2005. Branding: A Guide for Your Journey to Best-pratice Processes. Apqc. Healey, M., 2008. What Is Branding? Rockport Publishers. Neumeier, M., 2006. The Brand Gap: How To Bridge The Distance Between Business Strategy And Design. Peachpit Press. Park, W. C. & et. al., 2008. Brand Attachment: Construct, Consequences and Causes. Now Publishers Inc. Pandey, A., 2009. Understanding Consumer Perception of Brand Personality. The IUP Journal of Brand Management, Vol. VI, No. 3 & 4, pp. 26-50. Randall, G., 2000. Branding: A Practical Guide to Planning Your Strategy. Kogan Page. Rakocevic, I., 2011. Brand Personality. GRIN Verlag. Read More