Abstract
<p>The objective of this study is to investigate how brand personality and customers’ ‘self’ affects brand engagement. This has become necessary because the focus of most research into brands has often neglected how brand personality and customers’ ‘self’ can be harnessed to achieve brand engagement. This study used Aaker’s brand personality, Keller’s brand engagement, and Sprott et. al. self-concept measurement scales. The research methodology includes the following steps: adaptation of the measurement scales to suit the research context, assessment of reliability and validity of dimensions, and test of goodness-of-fit of model. In all 252 valid responses out of 302 questionnaires distributed were used for the study. The research found that brand personality and customers’ ‘self-concept’ have positive effect on brand engagement. Sincerity has negative relationship with brand engagement and self-concept whiles hedonism has negative relationship with self-concept only. Competence, sophistication and excitement dimensions have significant effects on customers’ self-concept and brand engagement. Sincerity and hedonism also have negative effects on self-concept and brand engagement. Competence, sophistication and excitement can be used as differentiate strategy by Private Universities to deal with the growing competition in Ghana. The findings suggest that Private Universities can differentiate themselves by developing brand personality that is competent and exciting, whereby they can successfully engaged their customers. The authors’ investigations also suggest that self-concept can be measured by splitting Sprott et al measurement scale into two (self-congruence and value-congruence). In the same way, brand engagement can be measured by splitting Keller’s measurement scale into two (identification and ambassador dimensions) for theoretical insight. In addition, hedonism has been identified as a useful measure of brand personality but not clear with faith-based Private Universities’ brand personality. Private Universities’ differentiation strategy should be based on competence, sophistication and excitement.</p>
Highlights
The corporate vision has changed from one where only tangible assets had value to one where organisations believe that their most important asset is their intangibles, like brands and patentsThe impact of brand personality and students’ self-concept ...with potential to create sustainable competitive advantage
Changes in self-concept and brand personality can cause brand engagement to change by 56.67% and 33.78% respectively
It can be seen from the regression analysis that, the proposed relationship between brand engagement on one hand and self-concept and brand personality on the other is positive
Summary
The corporate vision has changed from one where only tangible assets had value to one where organisations believe that their most important asset is their intangibles, like brands and patentsThe impact of brand personality and students’ self-concept ...with potential to create sustainable competitive advantage. Recent marketing research shows that brand awareness is not a mere cognitive measure It is correlated with many valuable dimensions such as customers’ ‘selves’ and brand engagement. Notwithstanding, studies on brand personality and the symbolic use of brand to achieve customers’ brand engagement have remained limited to some sectors due to less understanding of particular customer group’s self-concept. Motivated by this proposition, many authors have argued that, the greater the congruity between the human characteristics that consistently and distinctively describe an individual’s actual or ideal self and those that describe a brand, the greater the preference for the brand. The empirical exploration of this hypothesis has been handicapped by a limited conceptual understanding of the brand personality construct and the psychological mechanism by which brand operates
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