Brand Management: Research, theory and practice

But research into the correlation between brand personality and consumers’
expression of self and other more in-depth research dominates this approach.
Research of brand personality and consumers’ expression of self in the personality
approach is conducted using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods.
Quantitative methods are used for categorizing and uncovering brand personality
and for the study of consumers’ self expression through brand personality; the
focus is on rich and descriptive qualitative data. Qualitative data are necessary in
order to gain understanding of the complex nature of consumer self and how it
affects consumption patterns and ultimately how brand personality can be used to
enhance consumers’ expression of self. The methods in the personality approach
hence vary from the very quantitative statistical studies of brand personality at one
end of the scale to longitudinal field studies of brand personality and consumer
expression of self at the other extreme.

Quantitative methods for researching brand personality

Investigating brand personality takes place in a cross-field between psychology
and consumer research. In psychology, quantitative methods dominate, while
consumer research methods are becoming increasingly qualitative. The aim of
quantitative methods is, simply put, reducing ambiguity by transforming
perceptions into structured quantifiable categories – or, as in the case of
methods for studying brand personality, reducing consumers’ perceptions of
how a brand can be characterized, described and perceived as a personality into
a structured set of brand personality dimensions. Until 1997 a variety of
methods were used to explore and measure brand personality, but none of them

Theory

Assumptions

Methods and data

Managerial implications

Figure 7.9Theory of the personality approach

The personality approach 133