Application of Aaker’s Brand Personality Scale on Human Brands in Surf Sports

Agata Kakitek

doi:10.7206/jmba.ce.2450-7814.240

Abstract

Purpose: This research explores the application of Aaker’s brand personality scale on human brands in surf sports. It investigates the potential for detecting differences in the brand personality profile used on human brands. Aaker (1997) developed a brand personality framework consisting out of five dimensions of brand personality and fifteen brand personality attributes. This framework has been used in several studies; however, it has been criticized by researchers for its lack of applicability as a general scale. This paper addresses this issue by testing all forty-two original brand personality attributes, used by Aaker, on professional surfers as human brands. A second objective was to establish an ultra-short scale for practical reasons since brand personality is often only one of several measures in a questionnaire. Methodology: In order to determine what attributes were the most appropriate when describing a professional surfer, a web survey with a 7-point Likert scale was conducted, which resulted in a convenience sample of n=219 respondents. In this study, the author conducted principle factor analysis and compared the results of an oblique rotation with Aaker’s results in order to investigate whether Aaker’s brand personality scale provides similar results on human brands as it does on product brands. Findings: This paper concludes that partially different facets than Aaker’s (1997) brand personality framework apply to human brands in the surf context. The more appropriate facets for human brands in the surf context include: real, wholesome, good-looking, secure, Western, and up-to-date. Research Limitations/Implications: Further research on specific athletes in different contexts is needed. It could incorporate other brand personality scales e.g. Geuens et al. (2009), Braunstein and Ross (2010) and Tsiotsou (2012) scales. Practical Implications: The findings of this study are useful for sports marketers to better understand athletes as human brands as well as their facets, in order to develop target positioning with specific marketing strategies.

Highlights

The sports market in North America is expected to grow from $63.9 billion in 2015 to $75.7 billion by 2020 (PwC Sports Outlook, 2016)
Brand personalities consist of facets that “consumers associate with a human brand” (Carlson and Donavan, 2013, p. 196)
The authors identified the need to investigate the athlete’s and the sports team’s using the original 42 item scale in order to search for the appropriate facets in the context of human brands. This paper addresses this by testing Aaker’s 42 original brand personality characteristics on professional surfers as human brands

Summary

Introduction

The sports market in North America is expected to grow from $63.9 billion in 2015 to $75.7 billion by 2020 (PwC Sports Outlook, 2016). Marketers use this pheno menon to transfer the celebrities’ positive attributes onto endorsed brands (Carlson and Donavan, 2013). Brand personalities consist of facets that “consumers associate with a human brand” As personality characteris tics are associated with people, consumers associate distinctive and relatively enduring attributes with specific brands (Aaker, 1997). This association, which is often used in marketing strategies, helps consumers form relationships with specific brands (Aaker, 1997). Professional athletes are seen as role models among fans (Mitsis and Leckie, 2016)

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