Proceedings of The 7th International Conference on Applied Research in Management, Business and Economics
Year: 2023
DOI:
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Perceived Brand Personality Difference in Self- Vs. Others-Gifting
Prof. Fiona Sussan
ABSTRACT:
Prior literature on brand personality (Aaker, 1997), brand-self congruity (Malar et al., 2011), brand-social-self congruity (Japutra et al., 2014) has yet to investigate the difference in the perceived brand personality of a product in the self- versus others-gifting situations. This paper fills this gap and proposes that brand-self congruity versus brand-social-self-congruity will result in the variance of brand personality in the two gift-giving scenarios. This proposed difference can be explained by the mechanism of identity salience in the brand-social-self-congruity situation when the social-self is being activated. We hypothesize that dimensions of brand personalities that match individual unique selves (one’s social selves) are more prominent in self-gifting (others-gifting). From data collected from a quasi-experiment that uses Japan brand personality dimension instruments (i.e., 5 dimensions and 36 adjectives from Aaker et al., 2001) to measure a Kyoto gift brand (Seigoin Yatshuhashi), the results found that the self-gifting group (n=45, m=4.33, SD=1.26) perceived statistically significantly higher Sophistication brand personality (t=2.69, p=.00, df=81) than the others-gifting group (n=38, m= 3.56, SD=1.36) while the others-gifting group (n=38. m=3.38, SD=1.14) perceived marginally statistically significant higher Excitement brand personality (t=1.49 p=0.07 df=81) than the self-gifting group (m=3.03, SD=1.04). Nuanced managerial implications and future research directions will be discussed.
Keywords: Gifting, Brand personality, Role identity theory, Food souvenir, Japan