Comparing Brand Personality Measures

In response to wide criticism of brand personality measures for embracing other aspects rather than brand personality construct alone, Geuens et al. (2009) have recently introduced a new measure that consists of personality items only. The present research seeks to empirically examine and compare Geuens et al.’s scale with the established alternative measure by Aaker (1997). The data was collected with the use of a split sample approach and by means of questionnaire survey, within the UK premium skincare market. The comparisons were carried out in brand- and respondent-level analyses. The results show that both measures revealed similar patterns in terms of personality profiles of the studied brands, however Geuens et al.’s measure discriminated more between brands and between consumer segments. It is concluded that the findings provide solid justification in favour of the new measure’s superiority over the commonly used alternative by Aaker in the given research context. This study should be useful to marketing scholars and practitioners alike, or anyone else who may be considering utilizing brand personality measures for marketing efforts.