About AMA

To examine these two mechanisms, the authors design a method for determining how different consumers respond to brand personality cues, and they test the mechanisms among 385 university students in the United States. They create two fictional brands: a clothing line and an adventure travel company. The research finds that even after consumers form similar initial personality inferences about a brand (e.g., “this brand is sophisticated” based on attributes such as “this clothing is displayed annually in fashion shows in Milan and Paris”), consumers who identify with that personality trait react differently to subsequent information about the brand compared with consumers who do not value and identify with that trait. The former group tends to view further information about the brand through the prism of that personality trait; thus, subsequent information that indicates that the clothing brand is expensive reinforces their view that the brand is sophisticated. Conversely, consumers who do not identify themselves with the personality trait of sophistication react differently to subsequent information about the brand. Surprisingly, they react to the overall positivity or negativity of the claim (e.g., “expensive” will be coded negatively, and thus the brand’s personality itself will be downgraded by these consumers).

This research has implications for both theory development and practice in brand management and consumer psychology. In particular, although prior work has focused mainly on initial inference formation processes, the results of this study illuminate the processes by which consumers update inferences. In contrast to the basic premise that incoming brand information is objectively and uniformly assimilated into a consumer’s impressions, the accessibility-based model suggests that the nature of the updating depends on (1) the type of incoming information (e.g., positive versus negative in valence and trait implications) and (2) how the perceiver views himself or herself (e.g., which traits are chronically accessible).

Managerially, this research helps identify when (and how) brand personality associations might be updated for different consumers. For example, consider the following question: How would a consumer who has made initial inferences about Harley-Davidson being a rugged brand respond to information that suggests that it is becoming increasingly environmentally conscious? The answer depends on who that consumer is. Consumers who view themselves as “rugged” may believe that this new information dilutes from the brand’s macho, rugged image, and they may downgrade their ruggedness ratings accordingly. However, those who do not view ruggedness in their self-concept are unlikely to change their initial ruggedness ratings of Harley-Davidson when they receive information about its environmental consciousness (a positive claim in general), unless the situational context succeeds in priming the trait. Furthermore, these findings have implications for how to address negative brand personality information, and they suggest that marketers faced with this problem can benefit by flooding the marketplace with positive information along any dimension. Consumers who react to the overall positivity of information should maintain or upgrade their brand impressions.

In general, although practitioners often argue that attitude objects such as brands can be imbued with personality traits, the current research suggests that creating a brand personality is a dynamic process that is not solely controlled by the marketer. The same objective stimulus (in this case, brand information) was processed differently by people in terms of personal, subjective meanings associated with how they view themselves and what traits are currently accessible in memory. Thus, the findings have direct implications for marketers attempting to understand the construction of brand personality, and they emphasize the constantly evolving nature of brand perceptions and the notion that both the consumer and the marketer have important roles to play in this process. Brand managers should carefully consider the brand personalities they develop and attend assiduously to consumer markets they are targeting to understand how consumers’ self-views color the way they perceive and interpret incoming information.

Biography
Gita V. Johar is Professor of Marketing in the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. She received her doctoral degree in Marketing from New York University and her MBA from the Indian Institute of Management. Professor Johar’s research interests are in the area of consumer responses to marketing communications and to temptations in the marketplace. She has contributed to the literature on consumer inferences about content and the source of marketing messages, measurement of spontaneous inference making, correction of faulty beliefs, and updating of attitudes. Her recent research examines consumer self-regulation in terms of goal setting, attainment, and responsiveness to temptations. Her research has been published in leading marketing and psychology journals. She has also coauthored a review chapter on consumer psychology in the Annual Review of Psychology. Professor Johar is Associate Editor of Journal of Consumer Research, and she serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Jaideep Sengupta is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. He received a doctoral degree in Management at the University of California, Los Angeles; before that, he receive his bachelor’s degree from IIT (Madras) and his MBA from IIM (Calcutta). Professor Sengupta’s research interests are in the area of consumer information processing, with a particular focus on attitudes and attitude strength. His work has been published in various journals in marketing and psychology. He is a member of the editorial board of Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Jennifer L. Aaker is Professor of Marketing in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Professor Aaker received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley and her doctoral degree in Marketing from Stanford University. She was on the faculty of the Anderson Graduate School of Management at University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Aaker’s general area of expertise is in consumer psychology, focusing on how people across distinct cultural contexts can feel, think, and experience events in different ways. She also studies the psychology of consumer–brand relationships and the role of emotions in persuasion. Her research has been published in marketing and psychology journals, and she has been honored with a number of awards. She is Associate Editor of Journal of Consumer Research, and she is on the editorial review boards of Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Consumer Psychology.