Most teams can name their brand personality in one breath: friendly, modern, bold, trustworthy. The problem arises six months later when someone asks whether that perception is moving or stagnant. A list of adjectives cannot be compared across periods, let alone against competitors. In marketing literature, brand personality is not a matter of taste. It is a construct that is measured, complete with scales, samples, and boundaries of applicability. The following four points are rarely mentioned when the term is used in meetings.
The five dimensions come from one study
The most frequently cited framework is Jennifer L. Aaker's paper, "Dimensions of Brand Personality," published in the Journal of Marketing Research volume 34 number 3 pages 347 to 356, August 1997. Aaker established five dimensions: Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness, and then developed a scale to measure them. What is important for you to remember: this is one study on one population, not a slowly formed consensus across markets. Its status is a measurable hypothesis, not a law of nature.
The dimensions change when tested in other cultures
This is the part that is most often overlooked. Aaker, along with Verónica Benet-Martínez and Jordi Garolera, retested the framework in Japan and Spain through four studies, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology volume 81 number 3 pages 492 to 508, September 2001. The comparison was with the United States. The results were not the same in each country:
- Japan shares four dimensions with America: Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, and Sophistication. Japan introduced its own unique dimension, Peacefulness. Ruggedness did not appear there.
- Spain only shares three: Sincerity, Excitement, and Sophistication. Spain introduced Passion, and did not include Competence or Ruggedness. Therefore, copying all five labels verbatim into a checklist for the Indonesian market is an assumption, not a finding. Ruggedness is the dimension that least successfully transfers across cultures: it is absent in both Japan and Spain.
The scale measures more than its name suggests
Audrey Azoulay and Jean-Noël Kapferer, in the Journal of Brand Management volume 11 number 2 pages 143 to 155 in 2003, argue that the existing brand personality scales do not truly measure personality. The scale mixes several aspects of brand identity at once, and personality is just one of them. The practical implications are immediate: an increase in score does not necessarily mean the brand personality has changed. It could be that another aspect of identity is moving, which happens to be captured by the same instrument.
There is a scale specifically designed for comparison
Maggie Geuens, Bert Weijters, and Kristof de Wulf responded to this criticism by developing a scale containing only personality items, published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing volume 26 number 2 pages 97 to 107 in 2009. The figures that make it worth noting: the scale was tested on 12,789 Belgian respondents across 193 brands, resulting in five factors closely related to the Big Five personality traits. The authors reported that the scale remains reliable for three types of comparisons: between brands within a category, between brands across categories, and among respondents. Its cross-cultural validity was tested in the United States and nine other European countries.
Four rules before you measure
- Lock in the wording first, then measure. Adjectives that change every quarter make the data incomparable to itself.
- Use the same instrument each period. Changes in measurement tools always look exactly like changes in perception.
- Compare with your category, not with absolute numbers. A score of 4.1 means nothing without a comparison.
- Treat Aaker's five dimensions as a starting point that must be retested in your market, not as a conclusion that can be used as is. If you prefer to see the explanation of the concept directly, there is a short clip here.
Sources
- Aaker, J. L. (1997). Dimensions of Brand Personality. Journal of Marketing Research, 34(3), 347 to 356. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224379703400304
- Aaker, J. L., Benet-Martínez, V., and Garolera, J. (2001). Consumption Symbols as Carriers of Culture: A Study of Japanese and Spanish Brand Personality Constructs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(3), 492 to 508. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.3.492
- Azoulay, A., and Kapferer, J. N. (2003). Do brand personality scales really measure brand personality? Journal of Brand Management, 11(2), 143 to 155. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.bm.2540162
- Geuens, M., Weijters, B., and de Wulf, K. (2009). A new measure of brand personality. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 26(2), 97 to 107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2008.12.002