Measurement and validity of Jennifer Aaker’s brand personality scale for colgate brand

Abstract

Brand differentiation is now becoming an important tactic for combating competition in the hostile marketplace. A viable solution for establishing the distinctiveness of a brand is through brand personality. Attaching personalities to brands contributes to a differentiating brand identity, which can make brands more desirable to the consumer. Jennifer Aaker developed a specialized brand personality scale, the five dimensions of the scale being sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. This study focused on measuring the brand personality of Colgate brand and exploring the model validity of Jennifer Aaker’s Brand Personality scale. The study indicated that: • About 93 per cent of the respondents used toothpaste and toothbrush among the oral care products. • About 55 per cent of the respondents used only Colgate brand and about 39 per cent used Close-up and Pepsodent together with Colgate brand. • 61 per cent of the respondents who were using only Colgate brand were using the brand for more than three years which indicates that most of the respondents had an understanding about the Colgate brand. • Most of the respondents who were using more than one brand have indicated that they switch among the brands once in three months or once in more than six months. • About 53 per cent of the respondents have indicated that they prefer Colgate dental cream among Colgate paste brands and 35 per cent Colgate Cibaca top among Colgate toothbrush brands. • Confirmatory Factor Analysis revealed that ruggedness, competence, and excitement are the main dimensions of Colgate Brand Personality. This shows that the company should stress more on its functional benefits than the emotional benefits whenever the company introduces a new brand, new ad campaign or any other form of communication with the user. • The items—trendy, exciting, and young—under Exciting Dimension are more relevant for the Colgate brand and the items—cool, contemporary and imaginative—are not applicable to the Colgate brand. This will be a major finding for the company and ad agency because they can improve the score in this dimension by concentrating on the creativity and contemporariness of its advertisements and other promotional materials. • Also, the items—confident, secure, and hardworking—under Competence Dimension are more relevant for the Colgate Brand and the item—successful—is not applicable to the Colgate brand. This finding will be an eye opener for the company A validity check of the scale using Factor Analysis was carried out which indicates that the number of dimensions of Brand Personality is 13 and that about 10 items of Jennifer Aaker’s Brand Personality scale are not applicable in the Indian situation. The applicability of this scale in the Indian situation was not checked because it required an exploratory study to identify the dimensions of Brand Personality in the Indian situation. Hence, identifying the Indian Brand Personality construct can be undertaken by future researchers.