Brand Management: Research, theory and practice

frameworks for the categorization of human beings according to their personality.
These frameworks define people according to different personality types defined
by certain personality traits. It hence assumes that personality traits describe
internal characteristics of human beings from which their behaviour in different
situations can be predicted and explained. Personality traits can be described with
adjectives like e.g. ‘talkative’, ‘organized’, ‘imaginative’ or ‘responsible’. There
are several theoretical frameworks used in the field of psychology for the catego-
rization of personalities, but one of the more common is the framework of the ‘Big
Five’. This framework reduces the number of adjectives describing human
personalities to five dimensions, representing the five overriding personalities
according to which human beings can be categorized. If a brand is high on extro-
version, then the brand behaviour, reflected in the personality traits, will be talk-
ative, active, energetic and outgoing (see figure 7.4).
This framework hence presumes that the extent to which a person is extrovert or
emotionally stable can determine or predict how that person will react to different
situations. The Big Five framework hence provides a framework for classifying
and categorizing human beings according to descriptors of human personality.
The personality of human beings not only determines how they will react to
different situations or behave in general, it also influences how humans are able to
connect with other human beings and the role that people with different personal-
ities play in relationships between two or more people.

Supporting theme: consumer self

Human beings attach meaning to possessions because we regard possessions as
part of ourselves. The meaning consumers attach to possessions is key in the
understanding of consumption patterns and the drivers that motivate consumers’

Brand personality

Supporting theme:

Consumer self

Supporting theme:

Brand-self congruence

Supporting theme:

Personality

Figure 7.3Supporting themes of the personality approach

122 Seven brand approaches