| Changes in the nature of today's marketplace point at consumers becoming long-term assets through brand equity; and trends toward building lasting relationships and brand loyalty have led to a focus on the concept of 'brand personality.' With products often homologous in terms of attributes, 'identity' or 'image' is often the only distinguishing factor on which consumers can differentiate.;Historically, brand personality has been researched using qualitative projective techniques: that is, sentence/picture completion, drawing, word association, storytelling, induced personification and anthropomorphism, and even construction of obituaries. However, integrated marketing communications expenditures based on such case-specific information have come into question. Studies whose results cannot be interpreted in relation to one another (e.g., in relation to competition, or the brand itself over time) are indicating the need for more externally valid and reliable measures. A shift to more quantitative techniques has offered generalizable, widely-held descriptions of brand perceptions; however, existing methods (i.e., trait approaches, semantic differential scales, etc.) lack a strong theoretical background.;The current research has applied the Adjective Checklist (ACL) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), modeled after Jung's theory of personality types, in constructing an instrument for brand personality assessment. Consisting of four dimensions, (Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuitive, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving), the model offers a total of 16 possible personality types.;The instrument was administered to 244 University of Florida undergraduate students, using a total of 10 brands from a variety of product categories. Reliability analysis produced strong Cronbach's Alphas in the adjective scale portion for items measuring each of the four dimensions. Results of paired t-tests and crosstabulation of type, as produced by both the MBTI-based sections and the ACL, validate the instrument as a stable measurement of brand personality. Furthermore, the measurement tool was readily able to differentiate between brands across product categories. Such findings suggest the instrument as a viable, time/cost effective measure of brand personality, grounded in a sound theoretical background.;Suggestions for further research include correlating ad executional variables, packaging, price, distribution, and so on to personality types; studying congruity between consumer and brand personalities with regard to satisfaction, preference, purchase intention, and so on; and linking specific brand personality types to ideal or high-equity brands. |
