Cyber-Positioning: Bestselling Authors’ Online Communicated Brand Personalities

Abstract

An artist’s personality is said to be a key differentiator in the market. The literary market is a saturate one and an artist’s ability to distinguish himself can be the determining factor between success and failure. The following essay explores whether bestselling authors communicate Aaker’s brand personality in the online environment. We argue that content analysis facilitated by a computer is relatively reliable and less tedious than that performed by human coders. We analyse the content of websites on the presumption that this reflects what the author wants to say about him/herself. The study offers a new technique for content analysts and marketing communicators to quantify various aspects of marketing communications and goes a little further towards the evaluation and mapping of websites using correspondence analysis.