Structural model of brand personality scale and its application: Comparing brand personalities of sport properties and sponsors by using equality constraint modeling

As brand image management is highlighted as a crucial concern, contemporary companies implement sport sponsorship as image-based communication practice. In spite of the practical and theoretical saliency, image-based sponsorship practices have not been thoroughly investigated. This empirical study deals with the validation of image-based constructs in sponsorship research. The investigation seeks to develop a psychometrically valid methodology of sponsorship evaluation based upon a sophisticated matching technique pertinent to brand personalities of sport properties and sponsors.; A convenience sample (N = 541) of undergraduate students was used for this study. A set of Confirmatory Factor Analyses was conducted to test the measurement validity of an a priori measurement solution, i.e., the BPS (Aaker, 1997), with respect to 2 x 2 pairs of sport properties and sponsors: Mercedes Benz, Nike, PGA, and MLB. To estimate the degree to which sport properties and sponsors can be compared in terms of psychometrical validity, a series of Equality Constraint Modeling (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993) was administered. Given the result from construct validation procedure, selected sports and sponsors were factor scored and compared by paired t-tests. This research confirms that the proposed a priori solution and matching technique are empirically applicable. Theoretical and practical implications are presented.