City Research Online

Abstract

This research approaches the personalities of luxury brands as understood and voiced by consumers. In an attempt to address the criticisms on the appropriateness and applicability of the generic brand personality typology to luxury brands, this work pursuits a new examination of the concept. Drawing on the experience of human personality trait framework development methodology, an “a posteriori” approach is grounded in consumers’ natural language to examine luxury brands’ personality disparateness from other brands. A combined methodology using online text mining and in-depth interviews was used to capture consumer vernacular for luxury brands. After separating brand personality traits from other brand descriptors, analysis of semantic similarity was performed. Based on the semantic distances of the cropped up traits, a new typology of luxury brand personality was developed. The new measure was purified and calibrated using two separate luxury consumer samples. This process led to the identification of six salient dimensions of luxury brand personality specific to the luxury domain and distinct from the existing frameworks. In addition, the new scale was employed to show that: a) member group fit positively influences self-congruence; b) self-congruence positively affects a number of consumer outcomes directly (purchase loyalty) as well as indirectly (purchase loyalty, purchase intention, and word-of-mouth communication outcomes) through emotional brand attachment, brand attitude, and brand personality appeal (purchase intention outcome only).

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Management Doctoral Theses Bayes Business School > Bayes Business School Doctoral Theses

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