The influence of brand personality and relative brand identification on brand loyalty in the European mobile phone market

• Author: Jooyoung Park,Sunghun Chung
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1321
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017

The influence of brand personality and relative

brand identification on brand loyalty in the

European mobile phone market

Sunghun Chung

The University of Queensland

Jooyoung Park*

Peking University

Abstract

This study investigates the inf‌luence of brand personality on

consumer loyalty and the moderating role of relative brand

identif‌ication for multiple brands in the same product cate-

gory. Survey data were collected from 1,651 respondents

in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Results indi-

cate that dimensions of brand personality that are positively

associated with consumer brand loyalty vary across brands

in the mobile phone category. Furthermore, relative brand

identif‌ication not only positively affects consumer loyalty,

it also moderates the relationship between brand personality

and consumer loyalty. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published

by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: consumer loyalty, brand loyalty, brand person-

ality, relative brand identif‌ication, dimensions

Résumé

Cette étude examine l’inf‌luence que la personnalité de la

marque a sur la f‌idélité des consommateurs et le rôle

modérateur de l’identif‌ication relative des marques pour les

marques multiples appartenant à la même catégorie de

produits. Les données de l’enquête sont collectées auprès de

1651 répondants au Royaume-Uni, en France et en Allemagne.

Les résultats montrent que dans la catégorie des téléphones

mobiles, les dimensions de la personnalité de la marque qui

sont positivement reliées à la f‌idélité des consommateurs à

une marque varient en fonction des marques. Par ailleurs,

s’ilestvraiquel’identif‌ication relative de la marque inf‌luence

positivement la f‌idélité du consommateur, il n’en demeure pas

moins qu’elle modère la relation entre la personnalité de la

marque et la f‌idélité des consommateurs. Copyright © 2015

ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mots-clés : f‌idélité des consommateurs, f‌idélité à la marque,

personnalité de la marque, identif‌ication de la marque,

dimensions

When consumers are loyal to a particular brand, the

company reaps many market advantages, including reduced

marketing costs, positive word of mouth, returning cus-

tomers, and a protected enclave of consumers in a com-

petitive economy (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001; Jacoby &

Kyner, 1973; Phau & Cheong, 2009; Tsai, 2011). The brand

loyalty literature suggests that the key to gaining these

coveted advantages is to build a strong, unique brand person-

ality (Aaker, 1996; Koo & Kim, 2013; Plummer, 1985). And

because a lack of distinct brand personality can hinder com-

panies from building strong brand loyalty (Timberlake,

2013), companies heavily invest in creating strong brand

personalities that differ from those of their competitors

(Batra, Myers, & Aaker, 1996; O’Cass & Lim, 2002).

Although practitioners have considered brand personal-

ity central to differentiating a brand in a product category

(Halliday, 1996), research on brand personality was limited

because there was no reliable, valid, and generalizable scale

to measure brand personality. Motivated by this limitation,

Aaker (1997) developed a general framework of brand per-

sonality consisting of f‌ive dimensions: sincerity, excitement,

competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. Built on this

framework, subsequent studies have shown that brand per-

sonality is positively associated with consumers’perceptions

of the product’s quality (Ramaseshan & Tsao, 2007), brand

equity (Valette-Florence, Guizani, & Merunka, 2011),

product evaluations (Freling & Forbes, 2005), and brand

loyalty (Kim, Han, & Park, 2001). For instance, using a

f‌ictitious brand, Freling and Forbes (2005) showed positive

effects of brand personality across f‌ive dimensions of brand

The authors alone are responsible for all limitations and errors that may re-

late to the study and the paper.

*Please address correspondence to: Jooyoung Park, Peking University

HSBC Business School, University Town, Nanshan District, Shenzhen,

China, 518055. Email: jpark@phbs.pku.edu.cn

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

34:47–62 (2017)

Published online 11 May 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1321

Can J Adm Sci

34(1), 47–62 (2017)Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 47

personality. More recently, research has investigated moder-

ators of the effect of brand personality. Swaminathan,

Stilley, and Ahluwalia (2009) examined the moderating role

of attachment styles in the effects of brand personality. They

showed that interpersonal attachment styles inf‌luence the

extent of brand personality effects and that different person-

alities are likely to affect consumers who differ in their at-

tachment styles.

Despite this substantial attention to brand personality,

empirical research has mainly focused on a single brand

(e.g., Freling & Forbes, 2005) or only a few selected dimen-

sions of brand personality (e.g. sincerity and excitement;

see Swaminathan et al., 2009). Because a brand’s unique

personality traits (e.g., the most powerful brand of a per-

sonal computer or PC) can offer sustainable competitive

advantages by erecting a barrier against competitors, compa-

nies try to build a clear and distinctive brand personality

(Diamantopoulos, Smith, & Grime, 2005). However, a lack

of research comparing the impact of various dimensions of

brand personality across brands can cause companies to

chase one brand personality trait after another and subse-

quently lose their key dimensions of brand personality in

the long run (Sherr & Ramstad, 2013). Thus, there is a pau-

city of research on the effect of various dimensions of brand

personality across brands, particularly when few brands

compete with each other in a highly competitive market such

as the high-tech product market (Sung, Kim, & Jung, 2010).

In addition, there is limited research on what factors

moderate the impact of brand personality on brand loyalty.

Prior research has recognized that brand identif‌ication, which

is a consumer’s perceived state of oneness with a brand, is an

important determinant of brand loyalty (Carlson, Donavan,

& Cumiskey, 2009; Kuenzel & Halliday, 2010; Tildesley &

Coote, 2009). Although consumers can perceive “oneness”

with multiple brands (Bhattacharya, Rao, & Glynn, 1995;

Lam, Ahearne, Hu, & Schillewaert, 2010), prior studies have

generally examined consumers’identif‌ication with a single

brand, without taking into account whether the consumer is

identifying with more than one brand at a time. This gap

can be f‌illed by investigating the impacts of relative brand

identif‌ication (RBI) and the extent to which consumers

identify with a given brand relative to other brands.

In sum, the present research examines (a) the relation-

ship between the f‌ive dimensions of brand personality and

brand loyalty across multiple brands in the same product cat-

egory, (b) the inf‌luence of relative brand identif‌ication, and

(c) the moderating role of relative brand identif‌ication in

the relationship between brand personality and brand loyalty.

In this study, we selected the mobile phone category in

the European market for two reasons. First, to ensure

consumer identif‌ication with a brand, a product should be fre-

quently used and widely available. Moreover, to make the

comparison of brand effects across multiple brands meaning-

ful, the product market should have several brands actively

competing with one another. Europeans, on average, made

144 minutes of mobile phone calls and sent 54 text messages

per month in 2010 (Whitehead, Phillips, Page, & Molina,

2011), indicating that they use mobile phones frequently.

Europe also had the highest mobile penetration rate

(128%), compared to other regions, including Japan and the

United States (Whitehead et al., 2011). This indicates that

European consumers are likely to have experience with at

least more than one brand. Because this study assesses

consumer identif‌ication with multiple brands (i.e., measures

within subjects), we expect that the availability and frequent

usage of mobile phones in Europe would allow consumers to

experience and identify with multiple brands. Using data

collected through an online questionnaire administered in

three countries (the United Kingdom, Germany, and France),

this study directly compares the inf‌luence of the f‌ive

dimensions of brand personality on brand loyalty across the

top four mobile phone brands (Samsung, Apple, Nokia, and

Sony) and explores the moderating effect of relative brand

identif‌ication (Curlo & Chamblee, 1998; Keller, 1998; Kim

et al., 2001; Kuenzel & Halliday, 2008).

This study contributes to the existing literature on brands

in multiple ways. First, it is one of the f‌irst to consider and

empirically test the inf‌luence of all f‌ive dimensions of brand

personality on brand loyalty. Results show that the dimen-

sions of brand personality that signif‌icantly inf‌luence brand

loyalty vary across brands in the same product category,

and these differences exist even after controlling for exoge-

nous effects such as age, gender, country, market share, and

product involvement. In order to create positive and recog-

nizable brand personality, companies need to simultaneously

consider various dimensions of brand personality and their

effects. Although the conventional implications of the mar-

keting literature suggest that companies should distinguish

their brands from others, there has been little empirical re-

search on brand personality. However, we empirically dem-

onstrate that the positive inf‌luence of multiple dimensions

of brand personality differs across brands. These f‌indings

emphasize the importance of a comprehensive understanding

of brand personality. Second, whereas previous research

limits consumers’identif‌ication with a single brand isolated

from competing brands in the category (e.g., Carlson et al.,

2009; Kuenzel & Halliday, 2008), the present study concerns

relative brand identif‌ication, which indicates how deeply a

consumer identif‌ies a given brand relative to other brands,

and allows for the possibility that consumers identify with

multiple brands in the category (Lam et al., 2010). Thus,

the current study overcomes the limitation of previous work

by more accurately demonstrating the impact of brand iden-

tif‌ication. Finally, this study advances the understanding of

the effect of brand personality by investigating when brand

personality has a greater or lesser impact on brand loyalty,

depending on relative brand identif‌ication. The f‌indings of

this study enable market researchers and practitioners to un-

derstand the interactive inf‌luence of brand personality and

relative brand identif‌ication on brand loyalty. The remainder

BRAND PERSONALITY AND RELATIVE BRAND IDENTIFICATION CHUNG AND PARK

Can J Adm Sci

34(1), 47–62 (2017)Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 48