RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

172 RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP
what they have all in common is the fact that the focus should be on customers. Thus, according
to Zeithaml (1988), perceived “service quality is the extent to which a firm successfully
serves the purpose of customers”. Only the customer has access to the respective service and
has the power to decide whether his experience with the product was a valuable one and if
he was entirely happy with the service delivered.
Brand personality
Brand personality is one of the most studied constructs of brand association and a construct
that gained a lot of researchers’ attention in the 1990s. The American Marketing Association
defines a brand as “a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them,
intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate
them from those of the competitors”.
The liaison between “brand” and “personality” brings us to the “brand personality” term.
Anana & Nique (2010) consider that “brand personality is a metaphoric way of portraying a
brand that facilitates the attribution of emotional values to brands, especially when advertising
involves celebrity endorsement”. Thus, consumers have become used “to assigning personal
qualities to inanimate brand objects, to thinking about brands as if they were human
characters or to animate products of their own” (Aaker, 1997). The association between a
brand and a person or an endorser is very strong since that person’s spirit is evoked in one’s
mind when using the brand, and it also overshadows the human qualities, like emotion, thought
and volition, according to Anana & Nique (2010).
Many authors have intended to measure the concept of brand personality. Aaker (1997)
used factor analysis to develop a five dimensional scale in her attempt to measure brand personality.
Factor modeling has been extensively used in brand personality research in order
to size the dimensions of brand personality.
Brand equity is defined as “the added value which a brand provides to the product”, whereas
“brand personality dimensions are used by consumers as a significant determinant of this added
value represented by brand equity” (Ahmad & Thyagaraj, 2014). Brand personality and brand
equity are therefore two interconnected concepts; whose interaction needs to be understood
when designing brand management strategies.
In her popular “Dimensions of brand personality”, which remains an important work of
brand personalization, Jennifer Aaker develops a theoretical framework by identifying five
dimensions of brand personality (sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness)
using a factor analytical approach.
Geuens et al. (2009) developed a new brand personality scale, consisting of personality
items only. Their scale has three clear objectives: “one is to exclude all non-personality items,
the second one is to assess the generalizability of the scale across research purposes and countries
and the third one is to test the reliability and validity of the scale” (Geuens et al., 2009).
The new brand personality measure developed by Geuens et al. (2009) consists of responsibility
(down to earth, stable, responsible), activity (active, dynamic, innovative), aggressiveness
(aggressive, bold), simplicity (ordinary, simple) and emotionality (romantic, sentimental).