1. Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
Brand personality is one of the core dimensions of brand equity (Aaker, 1996). It is concerned with how people attach a “pseudo” human personality to the brand itself, rather than to what the brand does (Keller, 1998). Brand personality has received considerable attention from marketing scholars, because the principal advantage of creating a brand personality is that it increases consumer preference and usage (Sirgy, 1982), and levels of trust and loyalty (Aaker, 1997). Moreover, researchers at Whirlpool Corporation pointed out that “brand personalities are often the basis for a long-term relationship with the brand” and suggest “what type of person the brand would be if it were human and what it would do and like” (Hawkins et al., 2001, p. 376). In this vein, prior research adopted the trait approach, in which brand personality was conceptualized as a set of multi-dimensional traits. In the most comprehensive study to date, Aaker (1997) identified the “Big Five” dimensions of brand personality: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. Her work has established an important cornerstone in the development of an object measurement scale, the variables of which influence consumer purchase decisions both independently and interdependently.
1.2 Problem statement
Brand personality has received levels of research from academics and practitioners alike, but there is no research that presents the first empirical test of the direct effect of brand personality and how it drives consumer behavior. So, this research presents the first empirical test of the direct effect of brand personality and how it drives consumer behavior.
1.3 Objective of the study
The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to present empirical evidence of brand personality's effect on different performance outcomes using experimental research. This manuscript is organized as follows. First, we provide a selective review...