Personalidad de Marca

7Brand Personality and Consumer Congruity: Implications for Advertising Strategy 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Brand Personality and Consumer Congruity:Implications for Advertising Strategy

Bilal Mustafa Khan*

Driven by the competitive environment in fashion business, marketers have realized that creatinga favorable brand image is a key to win larger market share. This paper examines the influenceof brand personality on advertising response in fashion lifestyle branding context. The research wasdesigned to explore the measurement and application of Brand Personality Congruence (BPC) andattempts to establish a relationship between self-congruency and advertising response measures. Thestudy is empirical in nature and involved administering a questionnaire to the respondents, priorto which they were shown print ads of leading fashion and lifestyle brands in India. Results indicatethe existence of a strong relationship between self-congruity and advertising response measureswhich include attitude towards the ad, attitude towards the brand and behavioral intentions.

* Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management Studies and Research,Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), India. E-mail: [email protected]

IntroductionIn todays competitive environment, brand differentiation based on tangible attributes isdifficult to achieve. Therefore, concepts, like customer-brand relationship (Blackston,1993), brand magic (Biel, 1997) or lovemark (Beckman, 2002) have become importantin brand building literature. The reason for the success of these lies in the emotional andself-expression benefits that brands provide to their ultimate consumers. From the brandbuilding perspective, brand personality is considered as an important input variable inbranding strategy models (Kapferer, 1991; Keller, 1993; and Aaker, 1996). From thecustomer perspective, the adoption of new brands is a consequence of advertising process(Mehta, 1994 and 1999; Cobb-Walgren et al., 1995; and Meenaghan, 1995).

Consumer purchase products/brands not only on the basis of their functions or quality,but do so, more importantly, because of the symbolic meanings contained in products/brands (Veryzer, 1995). Brands offer different values to consumers: these values arebasically functional (i.e., the problem-solving capability of a brand), experiential(i.e., benefits related to sensory enjoyment or cognitive arousal), and symbolic brandbenefits (i.e., the signal effects shown to others via the brand) (Keller, 1993).

Marconi (2000) asserted that brand personality, defined as the set of humancharacteristics associated with a brand (Aaker, 1997), is of great consequence inmarketing because the building of a public identification of oneself with the brand canlead to strong brand loyalty. Emphasizing key attributes that customers deem importantfacilitates self-congruity with the brands personality, thus increasing the probability of

The IUP Journal of Brand Management, Vol. VII, Nos. 1 & 2, 20108

being chosen by the customer (Aaker, 1999; Kassarjian, 1971; Kotler, 2003; Sirgy, 1982;and Wee, 2004).

Brand personality is an attractive and appealing concept in contemporary marketing.It is one of the core dimensions of the brand identity (Aaker, 1996) and perhaps the oneclosest to the consumers. The personality idea corresponds with the contemporarysocietys ideology of revering the personal relationships. Relationships are central to anyindividual and command his attention and respect. Maslows need hierarchy identified theneed of belongingness, love and esteem eons ago. Drawing on the same lines, the brandpersonalities are created employing different ways and active communication tools on theside of the firms. The intention is to influence and color the evaluation of alternativestages of consumer buying behavior model. The power of advertising is used to make iteven more efficacious, compelling and convincing.

In this stage, and for these goals, advertising is considered to be the most effectivecommunication tool (Brassington and Pettitt, 2000).

Keller (1993) asserts that an integral component of building positive customer basedbrand equity is brand knowledge. The theoretical framework proposed by Keller (1993)states that brand knowledge has two primary dimensions: brand awareness and brandimage. Brand awareness is the ability for a buyer to recognize or recall that a brand is amember of a certain product category (Aaker, 1991, p. 61). Brand image is the set ofassociations linked to the brand that consumers hold in memory (Keller, 1993, p. 2). Bothof these dimensions play a role in affecting consumer decision making by increasing theprobability that the customer will choose the specific brand over other brands offering thesame product or service.

Keller (1993) suggested that brands offer three benefits for a consumer: Functional,experiential, and symbolic. Of these, brand personality addresses the symbolic orself-expressive function (Keller, 1993; Aaker, 1997; Siguaw et al., 1999; and Wee, 2004) andthese benefits impact the customers behavior towards a brand. Dolich (1969) suggestedthat a consumer can maintain or enhance his/her self by using products or brands thatare symbolically similar to the self. Research has shown that consumers tend to supportbrands and services whose personalities closely match their own (Sirgy, 1982; Fournier,1994; Siguaw et al., 1999; Kotler, 2003; and Wee, 2004). This underlines the importanceof creating favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in the customers memory(Keller, 1993). Increased levels of brand knowledge then can lead to greater profits andsustained brand loyalty, even in the presence of switching motivators.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the personality of fashion apparel brandsand to examine the influence of self concept and BPC on their advertising response. Thepaper begins with a review of the literature and especially focuses on key concepts suchas brand personality and self congruence in branding advertising processing context. Lateron the results of an experimental study that was conducted in order to assess the brandpersonality profile of 15 fashion apparel brands are discussed.

9Brand Personality and Consumer Congruity: Implications for Advertising Strategy

Literature ReviewKeller (1998) states that, Brand personality reflects how people feel about a brand, ratherthan what they think the brand is or does. The symbolic use of brands is possible becauseconsumers often give brands human personalities (Aaker, 1997). Consumers usuallyperceive the brand as having quasi-human traits and an evaluation of a brand is done ondimensions that typically capture a persons personality, and extend that to the domainof brands. Brand personality is measured by extending the traits of human personality tothe domain of brands.

The research on brand personality suggests that consumers select brands that arecongruent with their needs and personal characteristics. Brand characteristics tend to besimilar with the consumers self concept and personality traits, therefore behavior choicesare predictable if marketers identify consumers self-images and brand perceptions. Frelingand Forbes (2005) found that brands with strong personalities are likely to generatepositive attitudes with consumers, which are likely to result in evaluations that are morefavorable. Brand meaning and personality is found to transcend cultural boundariesand therefore coupled with consumer personality characteristics, would be a valuablecombination for marketing strategy purposes for all kinds of brands globally (Aaker andSchmitt, 2001; and Escalas and Bettman, 2005).

Brand Personality and Consumers Self-CongruitySelf-congruity represents the degree of similarity between consumers self-image orself concept and that of a brand. The degree of consistency between the self-image and brandimage is self-congruity (Sirgy, 1982). The four aspects of self-concept compose the globalself-image, which is hypothesized to influence consumer choices of products/brands throughself-image with brand image congruity (Johar and Sirgy, 1991; and Sirgy and Su, 2000).Congruity impacts are desirable because they influence consumersself-image positively, but inconsistencies or incongruity is likely to result in feelings ofinadequacy, and dissatisfaction with their choices (Johar and Sirgy, 1991; and Sirgy and Su,2000). According to Pervin and John (2001), self-concept is often viewed as a componentof personality.

Identifying congruity relationships between brand image and consumers self-imagewould enable marketers to position and promote products more effectively with theappropriate target markets (Table 1). Identifying more clearly symbolic brand personalitymeanings, consumer personality characteristics and the interrelationships betweenconsumer self-image and brand image, would provide an integrated homothetic approachto understanding the symbolic with the actual consumer needs. Every brand communicatesdistinctly with the specific personality traits of the individual consumers. The personalityconstructs so created after the conjunction of brand image with consumers self-image areuniversally acceptable as they transcend all cultural gulfs and remain stable for a long time.Hence an exhaustive insight and an acute understanding of the same are indispensableand crucial from the marketers perspective. (Jung, 1921 and 1971b; and McCrae andCosta, 1997).


Role of Advertising in Creation of Brand Personality and ConsumerCongruityAdvertising is a form of communication of used in helping sell products and services. Itcommunicates, informs, interacts, divulges and disseminates the essential information(name of the product or service, etc.) and implicit benefits of the product among thepotential customers. The advertisements often experiment with the recreation andreinvention of the brand image to carry the message forward and accentuate theconsumption patterns. For the same advertisements could be imbued with persuasion andinformation.

Advertising is a promotional activity for marketing goods and services. It is heavilyused in the process of personality creation. In the process of personality creation,advertising and marketing communication approaches are largely used to create a brandspersonality (Redenbach, 2000). The execution strategies for conveying and imparting thecore idea can vary from the informational to emotional.

Through television, radio, cinema, magazines, newspapers, video games, carrier bags,billboards, mail or post and Internet marketing brands reach large numbers of individualsrepresenting a wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Also the qualitative factors

Table 1: Comparison of Self-Congruity (SC) and Brand Personality (BP)

Content/Focus of attention

Scope

Conceptual Variants

Measurement Variants

Memory Process Involved

Level of Induced Self-awareness

Parameters Self-Congruity Brand Personality

Congruity between typical userof brand and specified aspects ofthe self-concept of respondents.

Narrowtypical user is basis fordetermination.

One direct source

Actual SCIdeal SCSocial SCIdeal Social SC.

Global measures (characteristicsnot defined; self-report measureof congruity).

Specified measures (characteristicsdefined; congruity estimated).

Recall (specified measures orrecall-based global measures).

High (explicit focus on the selfof respondents).

Descriptiveness of a set ofpersonality characteristics for agiven brand.

Broad, multiple sources as basisfor determination (typical user isbut one).Multiple direct and indirectsources.

Minimal variants identified BPof goods,BP of services,Retailer BP, etc.All are conceptually similar.

General scales.

Idiographic measures (brand/situation-specific characteristicsderived from pre-study).

Recognition (personalitycharacteristics are listed).

Low/moderate (focus on thebrand).


associated with the content and/or execution of an advertisement has an impact on itseventual effectiveness (MacKenzie et al., 1986).

Self concept and personality have been used interchangeably in existing marketing andpsychology literature. Rosenberg (1979) defined self concept as the totality of theindividuals thoughts and feelings having reference to him as an object (p. 7). Onkvisitand Shaw (1987) augmented that definition by saying that an individual compares himselfto other objects in a frame of reference that is socially determined. In consumer research,it is generally accepted that self concept (also referred to as self-image) has four aspects:actual-self (how a person sees himself/herself), social-self (how others see him/her), ideal-self (how a person would like to see himself/herself), and ideal social-self (how a personwould like others to see him/her (Sirgy, 1982)). The view of self-image congruence statesthat consumer preferences are determined by a cognitive harmony between consumerself-image and brand image.

Johar and Sirgy (1991) posit two alternative routes to persuasion: (a) Self-congruity:which is the match between the products value-expressive attributes and the audiencesself concept; (b) functional congruity: which is the match between the beliefs of productsfunctional attributes and the audiences referent attributes.

Rossiter and Percy (1987) opine that self congruence is the main route used intransformational advertising, in contrast to functional congruity which is very oftenused in informational advertising. Fashion apparel is a category with higher levels ofconspicuousness and consumer involvement, implying that self congruence is thedominant persuasion route.

Apparels are a nonverbal form of communication of individual personality andself-image (Thomas et al., 1991). The symbolic, self-expression and socialization roles ofapparel brands (Belleau et al., 1992; Elliot, 1994; and Shim and Koh, 1997) also enhancethe relevance of the study of the influence of self-image congruence upon purchaseintentions.

Hypotheses Development and Conceptual FrameworkResearch has shown that consumers tend to support brands and services whosepersonalities closely match their own (Kassarjian, 1971; Sirgy, 1982; Batra et al., 1993;Temporal, 2001; Kotler, 2003; and Wee, 2004), thus allowing them to express themselvesthrough the brands that they use (Dolich, 1969; Fournier, 1994; and Aaker, 1997). Wee(2004) concurred by stating that consumers fulfill the need for identity through thebrands that they choose to support. This reinforces Grubb and Grathwohls (1967, p. 22)conclusion that self-congruity, links the psychological construct of an individualsself concept with the symbolic value of goods purchased in the marketplace. Literatureshows that there is a positive relationship between self-congruity and brand choice/preference, purchasing and repurchasing decisions, and post-purchase attitudes such assatisfaction and brand loyalty (Birdwell, 1968; Dolich, 1969; Sirgy, 1982; Sirgy and Samli,1985; Ericksen, 1996; Graeff, 1996; Sirgy et al., 1997; and Back, 2005).


This research brings together two important areas that have been shown to be usefulin business and marketing applications: brand personality and congruence. Moreover,marketing professionals will be provided information that may be useful in designingmarketing strategies to maximize the leverage that a well-established brand personalityprovides. When the personalities of the brand and the customer are congruent, thechances of a brand to succeed increase markedly (Temporal, 2001).

Therefore for the purpose of this research the main hypotheses are:

H1: Consumers will favor advertisements of brands (in terms of attitude towards the ad,attitude towards the brand and purchase intention) with a personality congruent withtheir (ideal) self concept.

H2: The higher the perceived degree of self-image and product brand personality congruity,the more positive is the attitude towards the advertisement.

H3: The higher the perceived degree of self-image and product-brand personality congruity,the more positive is the attitude towards the brand.

H4: The higher the perceived degree of self-image and product brand personality congruity,the more likely is the purchase intention toward the brand.

MethodologyThe process that produced the scale in this study involves a sequence of steps consistentwith conventional guidelines for scale development (Churchill, 1979; and Anderson andGerbing, 1988). Content validity was established by evaluating the items for conformityto the theoretical definitions and for redundancy.

Brand Personality Measures (BP)

After a thorough review of the literature and on the basis of the previously establisheddefinitions, two types of brand personality measures were found to exist in the literature:general scales (i.e., those taken directly from personality psychology without validation forbrands; such as Neo-PI, MBTI and Big Five) and brand-specific measures. Only a fewstudies have specifically developed measures for brand personality, including Aaker (1997)(Figure 1). She proposes a five-dimensional scale, including sincerity (inclusive of down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful), excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative, andup-to-date), competence (reliable, intelligent, and successful), sophistication (upper classand charming) and ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough).

Attitude Towards the Advertisement (ATD)

Subjects ATD score was derived from an average of their ratings on five 7-point scales:good/bad, like/dislike, interesting/boring, creative/uncreative and informativeuninformative. These scales, which include both affective and evaluative content, wereselected based on a review of existing research (e.g., Gardner, 1985; MacKenzie et al., 1986;and Beihal et al., 1992).


Attitude Towards the Brand (ATB)Subjects overall attitude towards the brand score was obtained from average ratings onfour 7-point scales (bad/good, dislike quite a lot/like quite a lot, unpleasant/pleasant andpoor quality/good quality). Scale items were taken from existing research (e.g., Gardner1985; Mitchell 1986; and Beihal et al., 1992).

Purchase Intention (PI)Behavioral intentions were measured by four positive actions suggested by Vezina and Paul(1997) to search information about the brand, to visit a store, to buy that brand and toinitiate positive word-of-mouth or recommend the brand.

Principal components analysis with varimax rotation was performed to identify thefactors of brand personality. Factor analysis is intended to classify a set of variables interms of a smaller number of theoretical variables or to explore underlying dimensions(Kim and Mueller, 1978).

In the next step, internal consistency analysis was used for achieving reliability in thescale based on exploratory factor analysis. Cronbachs Alpha, a traditional technique forassessing reliabilities for each factor (Carmines and Zeller, 1979) was used. For internalconsistency, it was determined that reliabilities should not be below 0.6 (Churchill, 1979).After the testing of instrument, the researchers were left with 20 items distributed equallyalong the four dimensions of brand equity.

Data CollectionFor the purpose of this study, a sample of 250 respondents were chosen. The sampleconsisted of undergraduate as well as postgraduate students in North India, specifically in

Figure 1: Conceptual Model

AttitudeTowards the ad

Purchase IntentionBPC

Attitude Towardsthe Brand

Sincerity

Competence

Ruggedness

Excitement

Sophistication


New Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR). Some researchers have argued that theuse of student subjects in measurement/scale development research threatens the externalvalidity and generalizability of findings due to the non-representativeness and distinctivecharacteristics of the population (e.g., Burnett and Dunne, 1986; and Wells, 1993).

However, the use of students as respondents in academic research is acceptable andeven desirable in many cases mostly when they constitute the major consumer segmentfor the selected product (Yoo et al., 2000). More importantly, students are deemedacceptable for theory testing research in which the multivariate relationships amongconstructs, not the univariate differences (i.e., mean score comparisons) between samples,are being investigated (Calder et al., 1981). In total, 223 questionnaires were deemed tobe useable for the final data analysis, which is well above the critical sample size of 200multivariate analysis (Hair et al., 2003).

The data collection procedure involved a questionnaire organized around the followingthemes. The first part of the questionnaire involved eliciting the level of involvement ofthe respondent with respect to clothing. Scale items were taken from a study by Biehalet al., (1992) and include statements like: Does clothing represent a way to express yourvalues and personality?(functional) and Do you regard clothing as a source of pleasureor a way to indulge yourself? (hedonist) to assess the overall importance of fashion andlifestyle product in the respondents life.

The second part of the questionnaire included a 42-item brand personality scale onwhich respondents provided evaluations on 15 brands. The selection of these brands wasbased on preliminary content analyses of their advertisements to ensure that they wouldpossess the required characteristics.

The self concept and BPC was measured with an adaptation of the method suggestedby Sirgy et al. (1997). In contrast to the more traditional measures, the global approachrequires the subject to first describe the brand user profile and then state directly thecongruence or consistency between the brand user profile and his (ideal) self concept.

On the survey instrument, respondents were asked to rate 15 fashion and lifestyle brandson a 7-point scale of agreement-disagreement, rather than the 5-point response scaleemployed by Yoo et al. (2000). The reason for using an interval scale is that it permits theresearchers to use a variety of statistical techniques which can be applied to nominal andordinal scale data in addition to the arithmetic mean, standard deviation, product-momentcorrelations, and other statistics commonly used in marketing research (Malhotra, 2004).

The last section of the questionnaire contained items to measure the overall attitudetowards the ad (four items), attitude towards the brand (four items) and behavioralintentions (four items).

Analysis and InterpretationThe design of the study assured independent and random responses. However, the scaleitems were tested according to their distributional characteristics. Exploratory data


analysis was performed to weed out outliers and was examined for normality and kurtosisin particular. None of the variables were found to have significant departure fromnormality or pronounced kurtosis, and therefore all the variables were found suitable foruse. Some questionnaires were rejected as missing data was more than 75%.

The scale was refined initially through an iterative process of Exploratory FactorAnalysis (EFA) and reliability analysis. A total of five factors emerged after the refinementround. EFA was done by using SPSS Statistics 17.0. The principal component analysis wasemployed for extraction and Varimax method with Kaiser normalization was used forrotation. The rotation converged in 21 iterations. The Bartletts test of sphericity wassignificant and the Kaiser Meyer Olkin(KMO) measure of sample adequacy was found tobe 0.923. Researchers argue that for this measure, a value greater than 0.5 is desirable(Malhotra, 2004). Therefore, it is concluded that factor analysis can be employed on thedata for analyzing the correlation matrix. Out of the 42 items employed, four were droppedas their loadings were not significant (Table 2).

Young (Excitement) 0.749

Trendy (Excitement) 0.724

Cool (Excitement) 0.752

Exciting (Excitement) 0.740

Imaginative (Excitement) 0.738

Spirited (Excitement) 0.722

Up-to-date (Excitement) 0.675 0.457

Cheerful (Sincerity) 0.325 0.627

Daring (Excitement) 0.560

Unique (Excitement) 0.544 0.368

Successful (Competence) 0.701

Leader (Competence) 0.699

Intelligent (Competence) 0.660

Reliable (Competence) 0.663 0.392

Secure (Competence) 0.647

Contemporary (Excitement) 0.692 0.491 0.383

Confident (Competence) 0.550

Independent (Excitement) 0.363 0.538

Hard-working (Competence) 0.503

Table 2: Results of Factor Analysis

Factor 5(Ruggedness)

Factor 4(Sincerity)

Factor 3(Sophistication)

Factor 2(Competence)

Factor 1(Excitement)

Items (Dimension inAaker Scale) (n = 223)


Analysis of tlhe respondents profile revealed that most of them were in the age groupof 21-26 and males outnumbered the females in terms of sheer number. Analysis by genderreveals that 67% of the respondents were young males while the remaining 33% werefemales. None of the respondents were married and most of them had considerablepurchasing power.

Analyses of the responses involving the elicitation of the level of involvement of therespondent with respect to clothing revealed that most of the respondents bought fashionand lifestyle products as these represent a way to express their values and personality andalso a majority overwhelmingly believe that fashion and lifestyle products are a source ofpleasure or a way to indulge themselves (hedonist). Overall fashion and lifestyle productswere found to be hugely important in the respondents life.

Table 2 (Cont.)

Factor 5(Ruggedness)

Factor 4(Sincerity)

Factor 3(Sophistication)

Factor 2(Competence)

Factor 1(Excitement)

Items (Dimension inAaker Scale) (n = 223)

Glamorous (Sophistication) 0.831

Upper class (Sophistication) 0.824

Feminine (Sophistication) 0.718

Charming (Sophistication) 0.350 0.714

Smooth (Sophistication) 0.690

Good-looking (Sophistication) 0.441 0.663

Sentimental (Sincerity) 0.384 0.396 0.669

Sincere (Sincerity) 0.393 0.740

Honest (Sincerity) 0.389 0.739

Family-oriented (Sincerity) 0.684

Real (Sincerity) 0.351 0.655

Down-to-earth (Sincerity) 0.602

Original (Sincerity) 0.602

Wholesome (Sincerity) 0.599

Friendly (Sincerity) 0.405 0.680

Tough (Ruggedness) 0.811

Rugged (Ruggedness) 0.754

Masculine (Ruggedness) 0.655

Western/Adventurous

(Ruggedness) 0.408 0.658

Eigenvalue 7.012 5.348 5.01 4.196 2.575

Variance Explained 18.135% 12.443% 12.187% 11.043% 6.776%

Cronbachs Alpha 0.906 0.893 0.827 0.839 0.784


This is in keeping with the fact that most of the respondents are at that stage in alife cycle where brands and products which have a self-expressive benefit are patronized.Consumers view the brand as an extension of self and hence purchase products and brandsin conformance with their image.

Analysis of the brand personality dimensions reveal certain interesting facts. Brandssuch as Monte Carlo and J Hampstead score highly on sincerity, sophistication andcompetence and can be termed brands which are simple, caring and helpful while beingreliable, persevering and emotional at the same time (Table 3).

Brands such as Killer, Levis, and Lee-Cooper are rated as highly exciting and ruggedbrands with an outdoorsy image. They can be termed as adventurous, active, outgoing andcool while at the same time being rugged.

Allen Solly, Arrow and Raymonds are highly rated in terms of sophistication whichis perhaps due to the positioning that they have built over the years. These brands havetremendous inspirational appeal.

Finally, Raymonds as a brand stands apart from the pack on all dimensions exceptruggedness. This is understandable as the research indicated that men did not really aspireto be muscle rippling superstuds.

Accordingly, the Raymonds man was developedas someone more believable and fleshedout than the standard cardboard cutouts of yore. But portraying a caring man was a revolutionin Indian advertising. Research has revealed that even though the sensibly sensitive and

Table 3: Brand Personality Scores

Brand

Monte Carlo 3.55 (0.61) 3.08 (0.77) 3.19 (0.67) 3.43 (0.83) 2.58 (0.69)

Lee Cooper 2.08 (0.51) 3.59 (0.77) 2.82 (0.62) 2.94 (0.86) 3.41 (0.76)

Allen Solly 3.21 (0.57) 2.77 (0.75) 3.63 (0.71) 3.69 (0.72) 2.44 (0.76)

Woodland 2.97 (0.68) 3.47 (0.70) 2.95 (0.70) 2.63 (0.67) 3.27 (0.61)

J Hampstead 3.49 (0.97) 3.14 (0.92) 3.34 (0.77) 3.24 (0.75) 2.14 (0.66)

Wrangler 2.70 (0.66) 3.53 (0.76) 2.61 (0.78) 2.98 (0.81) 3.09 (0.60)

Bare Casuals 3.03 (0.63) 2.86 (0.65) 3.17 (0.70) 2.66 (0.89) 2.77 (0.78)

Van Heusen 2.44 (0.57) 3.65 (0.69) 3.44 (0.68) 3.67 (0.80) 1.80 (0.82)

Red Tape 2.91 (0.53) 3.51 (0.57) 3.18 (0.73) 3.18 (0.82) 3.39 (0.58)

Numero Uno 2.90 (0.72) 2.61 (0.70) 2.43 (0.66) 2.57 (0.88) 2.91 (0.72)

Arrow 2.97 (0.68) 3.47 (0.70) 3.19 (0.69) 3.67 (0.80) 2.23 (0.88)

Killer 2.34 (0.51) 3.90 (0.70) 2.63 (0.64) 2.90 (0.83) 3.53 (0.88)

Levis 2.55 (0.61) 3.58 (0.77) 2.79 (0.67) 2.93 (0.83) 3.48 (0.69)

Raymonds 3.52 (0.79) 3.65 (0.76) 3.48 (0.78) 3.93 (0.69) 2.98 (0.77)

Provogue 2.78 (0.78) 3.500 (0.57) 3.01 (0.67) 2.95 (0.72) 2.99 (0.85)

Sincerity Excitement Competence Sophistication Ruggedness


emotional Raymonds man was strikingly apart from his more traditional Indiancounterpart, yet it succeeded in awakening the aspirations of millions of Indian males, whoacceded to evolve and explore these ambiguous and hidden aspects of his personality.

The reason why the brand is rated so high on all the dimensions can be credited tothe advertising strategy of the brand. The typical Indian male, even the well-educatedone, may not be the idealized person depicted by the campaign. But what is important isthat the brand and the advertisement gave wings to their aspirations. The brand hastremendous aspirational appeal.

Analysis of congruency scores reveal that Lee Cooper, Levis and Raymonds have thehighest self congruence score and they are also the most valuable brands (Table 4).Purchase intentions were the highest for Levis while Lee Cooper obtained the highestattitude toward the ad score probably due to its print ad that connects with the youth.

The most preferred brand was Raymonds probably owing to its heritage and thefabulous advertising campaign that it has run over the years, which in turn has been ableto build brand preference.

Purchase intentions were highest for Levis and the probable reason why Raymondsis a close second could be that the segment surveyed frequently buys jeans and casual wearin comparison to suitings (product utility and need motive).

Table 4: Attitudinal Dimensions of the Advertising Effectiveness

Brand

Monte Carlo 4.21 3.05 2.72 3.41

Lee Cooper 6.14 3.58 4.03 4.42

Allen Solly 4.73 3.15 3.92 4.01

Woodland 4. 18 3.79 3.67 4.21

J Hampstead 4.59 2.89 3.23 3.96

Wrangler 4.75 2.95 3.41 4.11

Bare Casuals 4.96 2.93 3.11 3.95

Van Heusen 5.26 3.10 3.42 4.12

Red Tape 5.14 2.87 3.39 4.32

Numero Uno 4.17 3.07 2.95 3.89

Arrow 4.67 3.32 3.23 4.26

Killer 5.36 3.23 3.51 4.57

Levis 5.94 3.42 3.92 4.68

Raymonds 6.04 3.50 4.12 4.41

Provogue 4.59 3.16 3.47 4.15

Brand PersonalityCongruence (BPC)

(Mean on a1 to 7 Scale)

Attitude Towardthe Ad (ATD)(Mean on a1 to 5 Scale)

Attitude Towardthe Brand (ATB)

(Mean on a1 to 5 Scale)

PurchaseIntention (PI)(Mean on a1 to 5 Scale)


In line with the hypothized relationship (H1 to H4); significant positive correlationsbetween self concept and BPC and advertising response measures were found (Table 5).

ConclusionThe results indicate the predictive power of consumer personality on brand preferences.The results are consistent with research findings that consumers use brands to expresstheir actual personality.

Advertisement is inevitable to marketing as it deploys creativity, imagination,ingenuity, chimera all rolled into one to communicate the information, and is thus a veryunique and an effective medium. Understanding of the brand personality, an area withsignificant and far-reaching consequences yet an area less traversed, is inevitable andcrucial to any marketer. Hence, understanding the implications of the advertisingstrategies in building brand personality and user congruity is essential in todays marketingresearch.

The present research has emphasized the key attributes that customers deem importantand which facilitates self-congruity with the brands personality, thus increasing the

Table 5: Correlation Coefficients Between Self-Congruencyand Advertising Response Measures

Brand

Monte Carlo 0.38 0.43* 0.54*

Lee Cooper 0.56* 0.72** 0.79**

Allen Solly 0.54* 0.63* 0.47**

Woodland n.s 0.56* 0.53

J Hampstead 0.42** 0.54 0.49**

Wrangler n.s. 0.52** 0.48*

Bare Casuals 0.56** 0.53** 0.63

Van Heusen 0.45* 0.37* 0.49**

Red Tape n.s 0.65** 0.63**

Numero Uno 0.56* 0.60* 0.45**

Arrow 0.58* 0.59** 0.71**

Killer 0.62** 0.65* 0.54**

Levis 0.68** 0.78** 0.75**

Raymonds 0.79** 0.73** 0.75**

Provogue 0.55** 0.54 0.55

Self-Congruencyvs

ATD

Self-Congruencyvs

ATB

Self-CongruencyvsPI

Note: Advertising response measure: Self-congruency; * p < 0.050; ** p < 0.010; *** p < 0.001; andn.s. is not significant.


probability of being chosen by the customer (Kassarjian, 1971; Sirgy, 1982; Aaker, 1999;Kotler, 2003; and Wee, 2004). It has also provided supporting evidence for a brandpersonality congruence effect. This study contributes to the research on brand attachmentby investigating brand personality congruence as a determinant of product attachmentand consumers purchase decision.

From the brand building point of view, the results should help the understanding ofantecedents and consequences of brand personality dispensation, as proposed in severalbranding models (Kapferer, 1991; Blackston, 1993 and 1995; Keller, 1993; Aaker, 1996;and Fournier, 1998). Further these findings provide useful insights for brand managers inpromoting brand personalities that are relevant to their target audience.

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