Challenges in the Era of Globalization - iaabd

Challenges in the Era of Globalization
Edited by Emmanuel Obuah
guide for brand alliance. Hence, the significance of brand personality notably permeates many areas of
marketing domain of business activities. Clearly, the subject is intuitively appealing (Aaker and Fournier,
1995). Adding to the discourse in the extant literature, Wang and Yang (2008) show that country of origin
moderates the relationship between brand personality and purchase intention. They conclude that a
positive country of origin image could enhance the positive impact of brand personality on purchase
intention. Obviously, this scale of relevance of brand personality is considerable and also has implications
for marketing at both local and international levels.
One of the key challenges associated with studies on brand personality is having a clear-cut measuring
instrument that could be used for unravelling how consumers use these symbolic characterisations to react
to stimulus. However, the seminal work of Aaker (1997) provides some useful directions in this regard. In
this paper, she introduces a framework of brand personality dimensions and the scale for measuring them
after factor-analysing the items in each of the factors. The study shows that consumers perceive that
brands have five distinct personality dimensions which are namely Sincerity, Excitement, Competence,
Sophistication, and Ruggedness. Accordingly, Aaker (1997) developed a scale comprising of 42 items on
brand personality which have been tested in relation to different areas of marketing activities such as in
retailing (Zentes et al., 2008), selection of business school (Opoku, et al., 2006) and sporting team
(Carlson et al., 2009). Conceptually, it has been shown that this brand personality dimensions correspond
to the ‘big five’ human personality structure of Norman (1963) which includes sincerity, excitement,
competence, sophistication, and ruggedness (Freling and Forbes, 2005). ‘Despite this growing interest on
the topic, there is a dearth of study on how students as consumers perceive this in relation to the choice of
fast-food restaurants patronage.
Brand personality and Fast-food Consumption Behaviour: Theoretical underpinning
It is generally acknowledged that food is very essential to life, contributes significantly to human
existence, and plays several other roles in the society. For example, Wright et al. (2001) indicate that food
could serve as a source of nourishment, could be used for personal indulgence, and could also be a focus
for socializing with family, friends and others towards contributing to a general sense of individual and
national well-being. Also, it could be inferred from the study of Tzavaras et al. (2010) that religion, social
occasions and convenience are among reasons why consumers buy food products. These views are
indeed wide-ranging and accentuate the social impacts and relevance of food consumption. It is logical to
infer from these views that the importance of food will vary in relation to socio-economic background of
people in a given context (Gbadamosi, et al., 2009). Hence key characteristics like age, income, gender,
educational background, and culture will play crucial role toward providing useful explanation for
people’s consumption behaviour in this context. This viewpoint is corroborated by Jas (1998) who
maintains that the eating behaviour and the choice of food of adolescents who constitute a group that is
representative of the society are determined by a myriad of interacting factors. No wonder issues about
food are regarded as very complex (Blades, 2001; Iop et al., 2006). Thus, it will be theoretically and
managerially rewarding to study students’ consumption in relation to brand personality as such attempt
will enrich understanding in the literature.
Although there is a plethora of food type in various societies, fast-food has been embraced by many
societies in recent times. The fast-food sector includes organisations that engage in the selling and serving
prepared food and beverage to purchases for consumption which may be either on or off the premises
(Mueller and Kleiner, 2004). While customers’ requirements for patronising fast-food centres vary from
individual to individual, the key requirement lies in the speed of preparing the food (Church and
Newman, 2000). So, examples of these organisations include sandwich shops, chicken grills, hamburger
joints, and pizza places (Mueller and Kleiner, 2004). Kara et al. (1997) note that since 1970, consumers
have been allocating more of their resources to the purchase of fast-foods and less on groceries. Although
this view is presented in relation to the US, the growing number of fast-food outlets in most societies in
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