Abstract:
Nowadays, marketing professionals are increasingly aware of the importance of brands in the success of organizations, as it can be an asset with utmost importance for a lasting competitive advantage. Indeed, what is called a brand is something far more than a name. The brand and its affiliates pave the way for human communication. Brand personification is done in this respect. Although BP can be defined separately from human personality, it is not entirely independent of it. Therefore, in this study, the indicators of the component themes of consumer BP present in Iran’s market are clearly demonstrated. The present study, which falls into the category of developmental research in terms of objective, is carried out qualitatively. As a developmental research, this study uses a sample of 29 students of management whom were selected by non-probability sampling (purposive and judgemental). The main research tool was an open-ended questionnaire, completed and collected by semi-structured interviews. The findings consist of 74 indicators that were extracted and compiled from the literature review, theoretical foundations, research background (such as Aaker, 1997 and Geuns et al. 2008) and semi-structured interviews using NVivo software, which could be divided into eight positive and negative dimensions. Furthermore, some of the 74 indicators or personality traits identified for Iranian consumer brands include beautiful, personable, hardworking, always friendly, strong and capable, skilled, attractive, creative, efficient, competent, competitive, friendly to little ones, old friend, funny, dysfunctional, uncommitted, insincere, unfriendly (unkind) , bully, tyrant, naughty, narcissistic that actually constitutes the personality themes of consumer brands in Iran’s commodity market.
Machine summary:
Identifying Component Themes of Consumer Products’ Brand Personality in Contemporary Iranian Market (A Qualitative Approach) Mahmood Mohammadian Department of Business Management, Allameh Tabataba`i University, Tehran, Iran (Corresponding Author) mohammadiann@gmail.
Though Aaker claimed that her scale had good generalization capabilities, some cross-cultural studies like Ambroise, Ferrandi, and Merunka Scale (2004), Heere Scale (2010), and Geuens, Weijters, and Wulf Scale (2009) etc, were conducted to adjust the scale to other populations, afterwards; but none had the advantage of extracting traits from middle-eastern socio-cultural circumstances.
To develop a research conceptual framework to identify the dimensions and constituent components of consumer goods BP in the domestic market, based on literature review (articles, books, and research), an open-ended questionnaire was designed and given to the expert panel members, whose opinions and views on these dimensions and components were received as semi-structured interviews, and were then analyzed by NVivo Software (one of the best quality data analytics software that has attracted the attention of numerous users worldwide due to its diverse capabilities).
Finally, based on the analyses done with NVivo software, the themes and personality traits of Iranian consumer, good brands are identified and explained in terms of dimensions and components.
In effect, to identify the personality traits or themes of consumer brands in Iran’s market, three main steps or stages were implemented, which are described below and are also illustrated in Figure 2.
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