The Impact of Brand Personality and Students’ Self-Concept on Brand Engagement

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate how brand personality and customers' 'self' affects brand engagement. This has become necessary because the focus of most research into brands has often neglected how brand personality and customers' 'self' can be harnessed to achieve brand engagement. This study used Aaker's brand personality, Keller's brand engagement, and Sprott et. al. self-concept measurement scales. The research methodology includes the following steps: adaptation of the measurement scales to suit the research context, assessment of reliability and validity of dimensions, and test of goodness-of-fit of model. In all 252 valid responses out of 302 questionnaires distributed were used for the study. The research found that brand personality and customers' 'self-concept' have positive effect on brand engagement. Sincerity has negative relationship with brand engagement and self-concept whiles hedonism has negative relationship with self-concept only. Competence, sophistication and excitement dimensions have significant effects on customers' self-concept and brand engagement. Sincerity and hedonism also have negative effects on self-concept and brand engagement. Competence, sophistication and excitement can be used as differentiate strategy by Private Universities to deal with the growing competition in Ghana. The findings suggest that Private Universities can differentiate themselves by developing brand personality that is competent and exciting, whereby they can successfully engaged their customers. The authors' investigations also suggest that self-concept can be measured by splitting Sprott et al measurement scale into two (self-congruence and valuecongruence). In the same way, brand engagement can be measured by splitting Keller's measurement scale into two (identification and ambassador dimensions) for theoretical insight. In addition, hedonism has been identified as a useful measure of brand personality but not clear with faith-based Private Universities' brand personality. Private Universities' differentiation strategy should be based on competence, sophistication and excitement.

Brand personality in cultural tourism through social media

“…Therefore, the statistics support the hypothesis that brand personality has a positive effect on customer brand engagement. This concords with the general findings of Andonova (2016), Banahene (2017), Cruz and Lee (2014), Goldsmith and Goldsmith (2012), Jain and Yadav (2019), Lee et al (2018b) and Tamhankar and Pandit (2018).…”

“…Previous studies on this question have stressed the need of examining the effect of brand personality on customer brand engagement (Leckie et al, 2016). The analyzes carried out by Andonova (2016), Banahene (2017), Cruz and Lee (2014), Goldsmith and Goldsmith (2012), Lee et al (2018b) and Tamhankar and Pandit (2018) have in fact established its influence on customer engagement.…”

Does trust play a role when it comes to donations? A comparison of Italian and US higher education institutions

“…For all constructs, we used the same question (“Please select the option that applies to each of the statements below”) and a seven-point scale has been adopted (ranging from 1 = “Not likely at all” to 7 = “Extremely likely” for support, from 1 = “Strongly disagree” to 7 = “Strongly agree” for engagement, trust, and commitment and from 1 = “Do not agree” to 7 = “Completely agree” for attitude/intention toward donations). More specifically, the statements concerning engagement were formulated through a revision of the scale proposed by Banahene ( 2017 ), while those related to trust were developed and validated by Jillapalli and Jillapalli ( 2014 ). The alumni support items were extracted and adapted starting from the study of Bellezza and Keinan ( 2014 ), while the scale proposed by Jillapalli and Jillapalli ( 2014 ) has been adapted to measure the concept of commitment.…”

A Conceptual Framework of A Customer’s Perception of Retail Salesperson Opportunism

“…Indeed, previous research suggests that if managers were able to enhance the sales experience by reducing perceptions of opportunism among the salesforce, the customer's engagement with the retailer would increase (e.g., Keller, 2001;Banahene, 2017), thereby increasing the likelihood that they are a repeat purchaser and share their experience with others (e.g., Riivits-Arkonsuo & Leppman, 2015).…”