Browsing by Author "Smit, Werner Antonio"
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- ItemA communications approach to building brand personality: The influence of celebrity gender, communication appeal and product involvement(Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Smit, Werner Antonio; Human, Debbie; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Business Management.ENGLISH SUMMARY: The concept of symbolism can be traced back to Levy in 1959, and it is one of the roots that created research into self-expression, and created a foundation for brand personality research. Since then, the understanding of brand image perceptions, with specific focus on brand personality, has increased in importance. This increase was created by the shift to identity-based branding, the move from functional to symbolic differentiation, and the greater pressure to compete on a non-product attribute basis. Brand personality is proposed to be an important differentiating construct of brand image that can be used for brand positioning. Despite calls for research, the effect of communications on brand personality has received little research attention. Therefore, this study adopted a communications perspective with the purpose of assessing the influence of various communication-related aspects on brand personality and other consumer responses. Using a dominant positivistic approach, an experimental study with a 3 x 2 x 2 factorial design tested the influence of independent and interaction effects of the independent variables on the dependent variables. The independent variables consisted of celebrity gender, communication appeal and product involvement, whereas the dependent variables consisted of brand personality (dimensions, subdimensions, gender, and appeal), brand involvement, attitude (towards the brand and the advert), and purchase intention. Qualitative data was collected to develop the stimulus used in the main experiment, and the main experiment collected quantitative data through self-administered online questionnaires. The target population consisted of Generation Y individuals in the 18 to 24 year age range. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data in relation to the research objectives. The results revealed that all three independent variables of celebrity gender, communication appeal and product involvement influenced brand personality, as well as brand personality gender and brand personality appeal. Moreover, the independent variables similarly influenced consumer responses of brand involvement, attitude and purchase intention, indicating the importance of building brand equity in a complementary manner through both brand personality knowledge and favourable consumer predispositions. Brand personality’s malleability illustrates the importance of managing it over time to create long-lasting brand equity. All three independent variables were effective when there was good celebrity-product, celebrity-brand, product category-celebrity and audience-celebrity fit, as well as when the brand personality was strong. Thus, this study found that brand personality can be built when the mentioned fit is present and when a brand is mature. Celebrity gender was the strongest influencer of brand personality and consumer responses, followed by communication appeal and product involvement. Celebrity gender’s influence showed that in most cases, the exposure to a male celebrity resulted in higher levels of brand personality or consumer responses compared to when there was no exposure to a celebrity. In contrast, exposure to a female celebrity resulted in lower levels compared to when there was no exposure to a celebrity. Moreover, celebrity gender’s power to influence brand personality gender was mixed. The communication appeals’ effects showed that it is possible to build brand personality in a rational and emotional way. The communication appeals were especially effective in building brand personality gender. Product involvement influenced consumers’ processing and communicated shared product associations. In some instances the three independent variables used in combination influenced each other’s effects. This indicates that when the goal is to maximise the communication-related elements’ ability to build a brand, the combined use thereof in communication needs to be managed carefully. The current study provides managerial insights by showing that all three factors could be used to build the brand personality or consumer responses, in order to build brand equity. Moreover, brand personality could be built to have varying degrees of functionalism or symbolism, or degrees of shared product or product category associations, that could be used as points of parity or difference to create competitive brand differentiation. Despite the findings, brand personality theory still has limitations such as conceptual scope. Therefore, future research should address the theoretical limitations to develop brand personality theory and consequently its use in the advertising industry.