Recommendations for Sustainable Brand Personalities: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Sustainability marketing has emerged as an important trend both in practice and academic literature. The relevant literature has heavily focused on determinations of sustainable consumer behavior, and practitioners have used these results to derive short-term marketing decisions, e.g., adequate pricing of sustainable products. However, no study has scrutinized derivations of sustainable brand personalities or provided important long-term, strategic, managerial implications for marketing managers of sustainable brands. This study aims to contribute to this underrepresented research field and makes recommendations for preferred brand personality dimensions for sustainable brands. First, the personality structure of sustainable consumers by using a preference-based two-step segmentation approach is investigated, and subsequent profiling of the sustainable consumer segment is conducted. The research relies on the results of an empirical discrete choice experiment and a personality test, including the data of a representative German consumer sample. Sustainable consumers were found to be highly agreeable and open. Second, the personality results of sustainable consumers are linked to consumers’ personality-specific preferred brand personalities. Third, recommendations for harmonic brand personality dimensions for sustainable brands, e.g., competence, excitement, and sincerity, are derived, and therefore, long-term, strategic, managerial implications are provided.

Analysis of the Impact of Airbnb Brand Personality on Consumer Involvement and Institutional Trust

“…A study by Lee et al (2009) [17] showed that brand personality influences consumers' emotions, and has an effect on consumers' consumption behavior. Furthermore, similar studies indicated several other possible effects of brand personality relevant to marketers: consistency between consumer personality and brand personality, for instance, is linked to an increase in brand attachment [18]; in addition to that, research by Ghantous (2016) [19] showed that brand personality has an impact on the quality of consumer-brand relationships.…”

“…As pointed out by Lee and Kim (2017) [1], due to minimal product differences in the hospitality industry, brand personality is essential for Airbnb to differentiate from other brands. Symbolic and emotional values are more difficult to copy than product features, and are, therefore, useful to differentiate service brands [19]. Ghantous (2016) [19] also pointed out that brand personality is very important to service brands, such as Airbnb, because it offers the opportunity to position the brands' services as an emotional experience, and thus cater to consumers' emotional needs.…”

“…Symbolic and emotional values are more difficult to copy than product features, and are, therefore, useful to differentiate service brands [19]. Ghantous (2016) [19] also pointed out that brand personality is very important to service brands, such as Airbnb, because it offers the opportunity to position the brands' services as an emotional experience, and thus cater to consumers' emotional needs. Furthermore, service brands such as Airbnb could use their brand personality to go beyond the value-for-money logic and instead focus on ethical, social, and environmental values [19].…”

Exploring Patterns of Evolution for Successful Global Brands: A Data-Mining Approach

“…Strong brands [25] can be sources of firms' competitive advantage and positively affect corporate revenue and shareholder equity [26,27]; however, global brands may be adversely affected during a turbulent time [16,26,28,29]. Furthermore, it should be noted that brand equity and brand value change in response to a firm's sustainable management strategy [12,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”

“…In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused tremendous threats to global public health and brought about widespread political, economic, and financial collapse [37]. Given the negative effects of environmental uncertainty on business operations, further analyses of the evolution and sustainability of global brands should be expected [32,35,36]. Since different global brands may exhibit different growth trajectories and distinct transformation processes, examining the pattern of changes over time via data science is worthwhile.…”