A brand can be defined by the uniqueness of a product, service or idea being produced by a company. While there may be several other products, or services, of the same type in the market, a great brand will be the product or service that when seen by a customer can immediately be recognized for its uniqueness. Branding, on the other hand, is the process of creating a design, name, or symbol used to identify a given product based on its uniqueness (Fang, 2017).
Theories of Brand Personality: Aker’s 5 and Big 5
Brand personality is the concept of relating the characteristics of a customer to a certain product or service. With brand personality, one is able to link a given product or service to a a niche of consumers in the market based on their traits. A number of theories on brand personality have been brought forward which include the big 5 theory, Erik Erikson’s theory, Aaker’s and Alfred Adler’s theory. However, the most accepted theories are the Aaker’s 5 and the big 5 brand personality theories.
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According to Aaker’s 5 brand personality theory, brands can be defined using five distinct traits that include sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. In her theory, she defines a sincere brand as one that is cheerful, honest and down to earth. A brand of excitement, on the other hand, is one that elicits joy and happiness to an individual. A competent brand can be defined in terms of its ability to mass-produce while still maintaining the quality of the product. The sophistication of a brand, however, takes time to build. While in defining the ruggedness of a brand, its toughness and strength are among the traits that are observed and linked to the said product or service (Eisend & Nicola, 2013).
The big five brand personality theory, on the other hand, is where the traits of neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and extroversion are used to define a brand. In regards to openness, attributes such as originality, being daring, and having a broad perspective is looked into. For the conscientiousness trait, an individual can be said to be energetic, persevering and ambitious. In extroversion, the aspects of loving fun, being talkative and friendly are among the traits looked into. Agreeableness, on the other hand, looks into affection and kindness. Neuroticism is basically about being self-conscious and temperamental. With these traits at hand, a marketer is able to define and categorize a product based on the attributes which will help in identifying the intended market (Chih-Hui, George, & Pei-Ju, 2015).
Through brand personalities defined by Aaker, marketers are able to make an easy decision on how to sell a given product. With the personality traits clearly defined, a marketer just needs to categorize a product based on the given personalities and will definitely know which persons are best suited for the said product and the formula of marketing it. For example, once a marketer identifies a product such as a car as being rugged, one will know that marketing the same will be best done to people that like adventures and countryside driving. The categorization makes it easy to know the intended clients.
Congruency Theory
The congruency theory states that an individual’s attitude towards another is greatly influenced by the similarities that exist between the two. When there are lots of similarities between two persons, the attitude they will have towards one another will be positive as compared to a case where there are no similarities (Neil & Mebs 1999).
Looking at the theories of brand personality, and the theory of congruency, it is evident they work together in the area of marketing a product or service. After identifying the personality of a product using the brand personality theory, the marketer will need to use the similarities that are evident in the traits of the customers and the product before approaching to sell or market the product to them (Frank, Kai, Isabel, & Johannes 2010). Therefore, the theory of congruency will be used in identifying the right clients to a product. For example, after identifying that the Roll Royce cars have the trait of sophistication using the theory of personality, a marketer will identify a client who is sophisticated and classy in nature to sell the cars to. With the client’s sophistication, it will be easy to convince such a person to purchase the car.
With the theories of brand personality creating traits for the products, and the theory of congruency finding similarities between the customer and the product, a customer becomes the main target. By looking at what the customer likes, and the products that one is inclined to, it becomes easy to perceive the customers’ character trait and at the same time give suggestions on other products that suit the person.
- Chih-Hui, H., George, C.S., & Pei-Ju, C. (2015). How does Brand Misconduct Affect the Brand-Customer elationship? Journal of Business Research, 68, 862-866.
- Eisend, M. & Nicola, E.S. (2013). Measurement Characteristics of Aaker’s Brand Personality Dimensions: Lessons to be Learned from Human Personality Research. Psychology and Marketing, 30(11), 950-958.
- Fang, H. (2017). Beyond the Usefulness of Branded Applications: Insights from Consumer- Brand Engagement and Self-construal Perspectives. Psychology & Marketing, 34(1), 40-58.
- Frank, H., Kai, V., Isabel, M., & Johannes, V. (2010). Brand Misconduct: Consequences on Consumer-Brand Relationships. Journal of Business Research 63, 1113-1120.
- Neil, N. & Mebs, K. (1999). Orientations Towards authority and Congruency Theory. International Journal of Communication Systems, XL(1), 161-190.
