unlicensed effects of brand personality appeal and brand love on brand loyalty evidence from vietnam

Effects of brand personality appeal and brand love on brand loyalty: Evidence from Vietnam NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City – mai.ntmt2001@gmail.com NGUYEN THI NGOC LIEN University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City Abstract This study aims to examine the role of brand personality appeal in brand loyalty directly and indirectly via brand love Using data collected from 355 consumers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, this paper explores the importance of brand personality appeal and brand love on brand loyalty The findings show that brand personality appeal is a better predictor of brand loyalty than brand love itself Keywords: brand loyalty; brand personality appeal; brand love; Five Factor Model Introduction Nowadays, with the appearance of millions brands over the world, consumers have great opportunities to select the most suitable one for them and their family In order to survive in this highly competitive market, companies have to not only attract new consumers but also retain existing ones Retaining current consumers has been found to be more effective than attracting new consumers As Kotler (2000) estimates, the cost of consumer retention could be five times lower than that of consumer acquisition Krishnamurthi and Raj (1991) mention loyal consumers are less price-sensitive than non-loyal ones It means that loyal consumers tend to purchase the brand repeatedly because of its nonmonetary features, whereas others the same in response to attractive promotional offers Therefore, one of the most important challenges for managers and researchers is to retain current consumers and make them become loyal to the brand Brand loyalty is one solution because it is a key driver to increase consumer retention rates (Keiningham, Cooil, Aksoy, Andreassen & Weiner, 2007) Brand loyalty has been seen as one of the most crucial elements for a firm's sustainable survival and success, thanks to numerous advantages it offers It helps company increase sales revenue, market share and maintains themselves in the marketplace (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001) Dhaliwal and Singh (2014) indicate brand loyalty as an imperative tool for managers to enhance and sustain the profitability of company for longer time by protecting the long-term interest of consumers Tepeci (1999) states that brand loyalty would be a more profitable approach than other marketing strategies such as promotion programs or cutting price Additionally, the study of Ramaseshan and Stein (2014) suggests brand loyalty can bring lower marketing cost, higher consumer acquisition and cross-selling In sum, Dhaliwal and Singh (2014) consider brand loyalty as a source of competitive advantage and should be focused carefully on the company’s strategy Regarding benefits of brand loyalty, numerous scholars have focused on how to build and strengthen brand loyalty as well as comprehend the relationship between brand loyalty and its antecedences As Dick and Basu (1994) claim, brand loyalty is enhanced by strong consumer-brand relationship which can be achieved and bolstered by brand love (Ismail & Spinelli, 2012) and brand personality (Ramaseshan & Stein, 2014) Although love is a familiar concept in interpersonal relationship that expresses the feeling of one person for others, in the nature of consumer behavior, brand love is regarded as a relative new concept and has been attracting a burgeoning interest among academicians and practitioners just from the last few years (Batra, Ahuvia & Bagozzi, 2012) According to Ahuvia (2005), brand love refers to an intense emotional feeling of satisfied consumers toward an object, activity or a given brand other than another person Brand love is investigated to be associated with positive word of mouth and brand loyalty (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006), brand engagement (Wallace, Buil & de Chernatony, 2014), willingness to pay a price premium (Thomson, MacInnis & Park, 2005) and resistance to negative information (Batra, Ahuvia & Bagozzi, 2012) Considered a prominent element of consumer – brand relationship, however, the importance of brand love has not been frequently discussed in marketing literature and no empirical study has been conducted on the link between brand love and brand personality – the other factor of consumer-brand relationship (Ismail & Spinelli, 2012) Brand personality is defined as “the set of human characteristics associated with a brand” (Aaker, 1997, p 347) While brand personality has been proven as an important factor to enhance the level of brand loyalty in developed countries (Lin, 2010; Ramaseshan & Stein, 2014; Alhadid, 2015), only a few studies have examined this topic in the case of developing countries, such as Vietnam (Tho, Trang & Olsen, 2016) Moreover, previous study shows that consumers may feel confused when treating brands as humanlike, so that the more accessible concept of brand personality – brand personality appeal – is generated as a consequence (Freling, Crosno & Henard, 2011) This paper attempts to focus on brand personality appeal which relates to how consumers perceive the effectiveness of brand personality The result of this study will provide managers with a thorough understanding about whether brand personality actually appeals to consumers or makes them purchase the company’s products or not Moreover, taking a closer look at brand loyalty, various factors have been proven to have an impact on the loyalty of consumers Those factors are risk aversion, variety seeking, brand reputation, availability of substitute products, social group influences, peer’s recommendation (Gounaris & Stathakopoulos, 2004), brand strength, brand satisfaction (Casidy & Wymer, 2015), brand value, brand equity (Kuikka & Laukkanen, 2012), bond, trust and commitment (Olsen, Tudoran, Brunso & Verbeke, 2013), brand personality (Lin, 2010) However, despite the impact of brand personality, little research has been conducted on the relationship between brand personality appeal and brand loyalty Vietnamese local companies have faced with strong competition from foreign brands after Vietnam entered the WTO in 2007 and especially signed Free Trade Agreements (FTA) in 2015 It brings not only a great opportunity but also a huge challenge to local enterprises It emphasizes the special importance of building brand and brand loyalty for local companies Recently, an increasing number of Vietnamese firms have recognized the importance of brand and brand loyalty but unfortunately the result does not look very satisfactory A study conducted in 4,000 consumers in Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City with 60 brands in 10 product categories in 2006 showed that foreign companies won most brand loyalty in Vietnam (Vietnamnews, 2006) How to enhance brand loyalty of Vietnamese consumers is the question which has to be clarified if local companies want to battle and win international rivals This paper attempts to fill all the above gaps by examining the relationship between brand personality appeal, brand love and brand loyalty The impact of different consumer personalities as control variables toward brand loyalty is also tested in this study The remainder of this paper is organized as follows Based on the literature related to the relationship among brand personality appeal, brand love, and brand loyalty, our research hypotheses pertaining to these relationships are developed The research methods are introduced, specifically the measures and data collection The paper presents the research findings and discussion Implications of the findings are discussed Finally, limitations of this study and future research directions are provided Literature review 2.1 Interpersonal relationship theory The interpersonal relationship theory states that the relationship between consumers and brands is similar to human relationship (Fournier, 1998) In which the brand is no longer considered as a passive object, but is an active object and plays the role as a relationship partner In this relationship, consumers may assign personality to brand by imaging that brand has human characteristics (Fournier, 1998) According to Guido and Peluso (2015), consumers perceive brand as an ‘intelligent agent” or ‘intentional agent” in which the way they experience emotions and behavior toward brands is typically similar to humans, such as trust or favor In the study about the impact of different brand personalities on consumer-brand relationships, Aaker, Fournier and Brasel (2004) emphasize that based on the observation of a brand over time, consumers make inferences on the characteristics of this brand and theses inferences cohere into a generalized assessment toward the brand in its role as a relationship partner According to the interpersonal relationship theory, this study uses the human relationship metaphor to examine the conceptual model in Figure Figure Conceptual model 2.2 Brand personality appeal As mentioned above, brand personality is “the set of human characteristics associated with a brand” (Aaker, 1997, p 347) Brand personality has been considered as a new prospect of modern marketing because of many managerial advantages such as its effect on consumers-brand relationship and consumers’ behavior explanation (Louis & Lombart, 2010) Brand personality mainly comes from three sources, which are the association between consumers and a brand, the image a company tries to create and the product attributes such as product categories and distribution channels (Lin, 2010) Previous studies have investigated the effect of brand personality on consumer perception such as attitude towards the brand, intention of future behavior (Freling & Forbes, 2005), brand loyalty (Lin, 2010), brand attachment and commitment (Louis & Lombart, 2010) Brand personality appeal is a more approachable concept of brand personality for consumers as it helps them not confused when treating brand as humanlike This concept has been conceptualized and developed by the study of Freling, Crosno and Henard (2011) According to Freling et al (2011), brand personality appeal is “a brand’s ability to appeal consumers through a combination of human characteristics associated with it” (p 293) Brand personality appeal includes three dimensions: favorability, originality, and clarity Favorability expresses how positively consumers view a brand; originality shows how distinct the brand personality is different from its rivals, whereas clarity indicates how clearly brand personality is perceived by consumers In other words, brand personality appeal represents how consumers perceive a brand personality (Freling et al., 2011) Based on the degree of brand personality appeal, researchers and managers can measure consumers’ feeling toward brand personality and know how a specific personality affects consumers’ intention and behavior towards purchasing this brand (Kimmel, 2012) Little study has been examined in the concept of brand personality appeal, especially in developing countries like Vietnam Freling et al (2011) conceptualizes and measures the construct of brand personality appeal Gordon, Zainuddin and Magee (2016) mention that brand personality appeal has a mediating role in the relationship between brand personality and consumers’ attitude and behavior in both commercial and social marketing services The study of Tho et al (2016) shows that brand personality appeal positively affects to brand relationship quality and word-of mouth transmission 2.3 Brand love According to Carroll and Ahuvia (2006), brand love refers to the passionate feelings a consumer has toward a particular brand Fornier (1998) mentions brand love is an important component enhancing relationship between brand and consumers She explains this emotion relates to obsession, dependency and if someone does not use the brand, they may feel “something was missing” (Fournier, 1998, p 364) Brand love concept has been initially developed from the triangular theory of love which is discovered by Sternberg in 1986, in which, Albert, Merunka, and Vallette-Florence (2008) say that Sternberg’s three components of love including intimacy, passion and commitment can transfer to liking, yearning and commitment in the context of consumer Batra, Ahuvia and Bagozzi (2012) emphasize that due to different meaning of some dimensions belonging to love when applying to consumption situation, the conceptualization of brand love is still not fully analogous to human love In general, these authors summarize elements belonging to brand love, which are passion, selfbrand integration, positive emotion, long term relationship and consumers’ positive attitude In literature, previous scholars have found some antecedence and consequence that have relationship with consumer’s love toward a particular brand Long-Tolbert and Gammoh (2012) discover three interpersonal factors including gratitude, partner quality and social support positively relate to brand love in service industry The study of Sarkar and Sreejesh (2014) determines the important role of brand love in predicting consumer engagement and purchase intention Wallace, Buil and Chernatony (2014) investigate the relationship between brand image and brand love which in turn affects Word-of-mouth (WOM) Positive WOM is also an outcome of brand love (Ismail & Spinelli, 2012; Ahuvia & Carroll, 2006) Brand love is a relatively new concept, so the relationship between brand love and brand personality appeal has been still under-investigated Considering this relationship in human nature, De Munck (1998) mentions interpersonal attraction is associated with romantic love, together with heightened arousal, mutual absorption and sexual desire Furthermore, the triangle theory of love discovered by Sternberg (1986) addresses that love comprises three components: intimacy, passion and decision/commitment In which passion has a positive relationship with physical attraction Connecting to the consumer context, we may expect a positive relationship between brand personality appeal and brand love as passion is one important elements of brand love (Batra et al., 2012) So that hypothesis is proposed as: H1: Brand personality appeal is positively related to brand love 2.4 Brand loyalty The concept of brand loyalty is discovered from 1940s and takes the act of repurchase as the method to measure this concept (Rundle-Thiele, 2005) Generally, brand loyalty is defined as “a deeply held commitment to rebuy or re-patronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive samebrand or same brand-set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior” (Oliver, 1999, p.34) Over the years, the role of attitudinal loyalty as the other dimension of brand loyalty has been recognized While purchase loyalty refers to the actual purchase behavior conducted by consumers for a specific brand, attitudinal loyalty relates on consumer’s preference and affinity for a specific brand in which the actual purchase behavior has not yet to be developed (Lin, 2010) To argue the relationship between brand love and brand loyalty, accordance to the results of Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) and Thomson, MacInnis and Park (2005) we may expect that consumers who feel greater brand love will be more loyal to this brand In more details, the study of Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) shows the significant relationship between brand love and brand loyalty whereas Thomson, MacInnis and Park (2005) address the role of passion – one element of brand love – as a predictor of brand loyalty H2: Brand love is positively related to brand loyalty Previous study shows that brand trust and brand affect play as a significant role in enhancing both attitudinal loyalty and purchase loyalty (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001) The study of Kuikka and Laukkanen (2012) results in the positive relationship between brand satisfaction, brand value and brand loyalty in the chocolate industry Ramaseshan and Stein (2014) find that the level to which a consumer is loyal to a brand is affected by brand experience, brand personality and brand relationship variables which include brand attachment and brand commitment In the relationship between brand personality appeal and brand loyalty, we base on historical studies which explore the effect of brand personality toward brand loyalty These two concepts have been investigated to have a strong relationship in the studies of Alhadid (2015), Ramaseshan and Stein (2014), and Lin (2010) Therefore, we suggest: H3: Brand personality appeal is positively related to brand loyalty 2.5 Control variables Carver and Connor-Smith (2010) define personality as the dynamic organization within the person including psychological and physical systems that regulate all actions, thoughts and feelings of this person Five-Factor Model (FFM) has been adopted as a dominant theory of trait structure in personality psychology (Olsen, Tudoran, Honkanen & Verplanken, 2016) In literature, there are different names of five traits in FFM; this study applies traits discovered by McCrea and Costa (1997), which comprises extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience, as control variables toward brand loyalty The relationship between brand loyalty and personality traits in the role of independent variables was tested in the study of Lin (2010) He indicates various consumers with different personality traits can develop different level of brand loyalty His result shows that consumers who are high agreeable and openness to experience express high loyalty of a particular brand In this study, we include these personality traits as control variables to provide a further viewpoint to our hypotheses concerning the impact of consumer personality traits on brand loyalty Regarding the first trait of the five factors, extraversion, McCrea and Costa (1997) describe extraversion as activity with excitement seeking and positive emotions leading an active and exciting life Depue and Collins (1999) emphasize that there are three basic characteristics that make extraversion be one of the fundamental dimensions of personality, which is affiliation (enjoying and valuing close interpersonal relationship, being affectionate and warm), agency (enjoying leadership roles, being socially dominant, assertive, exhibitionistic and accomplishing goals) and impulsivity JensenCampbell et al (2002) determines some elements belong to extraversion are sociability and social interest Zuckerman (2005) says that extraverted people are more optimistic and usually happier than introverts because they have more happy reactions to unpleasant situations and tend to respond more positive affect than introverted people Unlike extraversion, neuroticism is thought to be the primary phenomenon in personality of sensitivity to punishment and negative emotion (DeYoung, 2010) Costa and McCrae (1992) define neuroticism by items referring to irritation, hostility, anxiety, self-consciousness, and vulnerability Neurotics tend to become easily upset, tense and have difficulty in adapting with stress and strains in life (Buss & Plomin, 1984) The study of Watson and Clark (1984) mentions neuroticism is associated with individual’s emotional stability or interpersonal adjustment In details, neurotic people are likely to have negative view or feelings of dislike to others Neuroticism is also related to hypersensitivity which may lead to poorer human relations and increasing victimization (Suls, Martin & David, 1998) The next trait of the Big Five, agreeableness, Griffin (2012) mentions agreeableness refers to the ability of people to get on well with others Agreeable individuals are reported to be gentle, sympathized, cooperative, understanding and expert in dealing with other people McCrea and Costa (1997) express some characteristics relating to agreeableness are trust, altruism, modesty, tender - mindedness, and straightforwardness Agreeableness is also found to have a significant positive relationship with prosocial behaviors and volunterring activities (Carlo, Okun, Knight & de Guzman, 2005) Furthermore, conscientiousness is measured by the characteristics of “Competence, Order, Dutifulness, Achievement Striving, Self-Discipline, and Deliberation” (Costa, McCrea & Dye, 1991, p.889) In which, competence refers to sensible, capable and accomplished facet; order relates to human tendency to arrange tidy and well-organized environment; dutifulness is the extent to which people hope to observe principles or standards; achievement striving refers to human need and will to achieve; self-discipline is viewed as human ability to continue a task despite fatigues may have; and deliberation relates to the planned and thoughtful characteristics of people (Costa et al., 1991) In summary, according to Olsen et al (2016), conscientious individuals are the people who are willing to comply with traditional rules, norms and standards The last personality, openness to experience, refers to “imaginative, daring, independent, and creative” traits (McCrea, 1992, p 5) Olsen et al (2016) mentions openness to experience is the degree to which a person focuses on intellectual stimulation, novelty, and variety They have a strong interest in exploration, engagement and trying new things including new ways, new situations, new products, etc to accomplish their needs Method 3.1 Procedure and sample Consumers who used smartphone – high involvement product - and beer - low involvement product – were selected to carry out the research According to Van and Duy (2016) reported in Nielsen, the smartphone industry has increased rapidly in Vietnam with nearly 90% Vietnamese people owning a smartphone Popular brands of smartphone have currently also focused greatly on building brand personality and created distinctive personality in consumers’ mind Beer was chosen because this market was highly competitive and familiar among Vietnamese people This industry reached 3.4 billion litres in 2015 and is expected to increase continuously in the upcoming years (Tuoitrenews, 2016) This study was conducted in Ho Chi Minh City and included two phases: pilot and main study The questionnaire was prepared in English version then translated into Vietnamese Back translation was conducted by an academic scholar who was fluent in English to ensure that no bias appeared in the translation period Before asking the main questions, screening questions were asked whether they were the person making purchase decision and listed one brand of a smart phone or beer they had used in the last six months Explanation about definition and some examples of brand personality were given to make sure that all consumers could understand the meaning of this concept In the pilot study, in-depth interview with four respondents was used to make sure that all respondents could understand deeply all questions and the measurement scale The result of pilot study was presented in Appendix All opinions of respondents were taken note and revised to complete the final questionnaire After finishing the first phase, the main study was conducted by using convenience sampling The purpose of this period was to collect data for testing the hypotheses A team of students were hired to collect data via online and hard-copy directly to respondents We distributed 400 questionnaires including hard copy and online versions to students of University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, employees of some companies and consumers of Co.opmart and Big C supermarket in Ho Chi Minh City After screening the questionnaires, we had 355 completed questionnaires for further analysis Descriptive analysis of gender characteristics resulted in 185 (52.11%) male and 170 (47.89%) female consumers among 355 samples Consumers who chose the smartphone predominated in total number, with 66.76% whereas beer was chosen by 118 consumers (33.24 %) Young consumers from 18 to 30 years old took 57.75% while consumers who were older than 30 years old took 42.25% in total There were about one third of consumers included in this study were officers; entrepreneurs, students and housewives took a third and the remaining was other occupations Most of respondents earned less than 10 million VND per month with 302 people (85.1%) and 53 respondents (14.9%) who had monthly income more than 10 million VND In data analysis method, Cronbach’s Alpha, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation model (SEM) were employed to test the model by using SPSS 16 and Amos 20 3.2 Construct measurement There were eight constructs included in this study: brand personality appeal, brand love brand loyalty, and personality traits which comprise five constructs: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness to experience Sevenpoints Likert scale from (strongly disagree) to (strongly agree) was used to measure all items In more details, sixteen items of personality traits followed the study of Olsen et al (2016) which originally developed from Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) scale (Gosling, Rentfrow & Swann, 2003) TIPI has been applied by several authors but it also had some problems with high cross-loading and low internal consistency coefficient, so that the study of Olsen et al (2016) added six new items to the final version All items were begun with “I see myself as” and followed by descriptive unipolar traits The measurement of brand personality appeal was borrowed from Freling et al (2011) which included sixteen items to measure three dimensions: favorability, originality, and clarity All items aimed to investigate what degree of appealing consumers evaluate the personality their chosen brand For some items that consumers considered difficult to answer thought the pilot study such as: “Brand personality of this brand is negative… positive, bad… good, poor… excellent, undesirable… desirable”, we changed the beginning phase into “If this brand were a person, I think X is negative… positive, bad… good, poor… excellent, undesirable… desirable” Brand love was measured by ten items adapted from the study of Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) whereas brand loyalty with four items of Chaudhuri and Holbrook (2001) These items reflected both dimensions of brand loyalty: attitudinal loyalty and purchase loyalty, in which attitudinal loyalty was measured by two statements “I am committed to this brand” and “I would be willing to pay a higher price for this brand over other brands”; purchase loyalty was presented by “I will buy this brand the next time I buy this product” and “I intend to keep purchasing this brand” Some items were reversely coded according to the meaning of each statement Data analysis and result 4.1 Reliability analysis Gliem and Gliem (2003) mention it is compulsory to calculate Cronbach‘s alpha when using Likert scale for testing reliability of scale or internal consistency between multiple measurement of a variable Cronbach’s alpha ranges from to normally and the internal consistency of the item will be greater if its Cronbach’s alpha is nearer to (Gliem & Gliem, 2003) Hair, Black, Babin and Anderson (2009) address that usual Cronbach’s alpha should exceed the threshold is 0.70 although sometime it may decrease to 0.60 in exploratory research Item-total correlation which is higher than 0.30 is another criterion for testing reliability of scales (Cheung, 2014) Thirteen items which did not meet the required criteria were deleted to final thirty three items The final results of reliability analysis is shown in Table 4.2 Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) The result of CFA showed that this model received a good fit with χ2=535.349 (p=0.537) and composite reliability (pc >=0.822) confirmed the requirements for good construct (Fornell & Larcker, 1981) (Table 1) Table Factor loading, average variance extracted and composite reliability Factor Item Openness to experience OPE1 Open to new experiences, complex OPE2 Conventional, uncreative (*) OPE3 Creative, lively imagination Extraversion EXT1 Outgoing, enthusiastic EXT2 Reserved, quiet (*) EXT3 Chatty, talkative Agreeableness AGR1 Critical, quarrelsome (*) AGR2 Sympathetic, warm AGR3 Kind, friendly to others Conscientiousness CON1 Dependable, self-disciplined CON2 Disorganized, careless (*) CON3.Punctuality, systematic CON4.Messy, inaccurate (*) Neuroticism NEU1 Anxious, easily upset NEU2 Calm, emotionally stable (*) NEU3 Nervous, tense Brand personality appeal BPA2 Brand personality of X is indistinct distinct BPA6 Brand personality of X is common distinctive BPA7 Brand personality of X is unattractive…attractive BPA8 Brand personality of X is ordinary…novel BPA13 If x were a person, I think X is negative… positive BPA14 If x were a person, I think X is bad… good Brand love Loading 0.858 0.815 0.879 0.796 0.839 0.855 0.846 0.898 0.808 0.689 0.703 0.734 0.799 0.843 0.851 0.874 0.676 0.837 0.787 0.752 0.701 0.847 Item LOV1 X is a wonderful brand LOV2 X makes me feel good LOV3 X is totally awesome LOV5 X makes me very happy LOV6 I love X! LOV9 I am passionate about X LOV10 I’m very attached to X Brand loyalty LOY1 I will buy X the next time I buy this product LOY2 I intend to keep purchasing X LOY3 I am committed to X LOY4 I would be willing to pay a higher price for X over other brands Factor Loading pvc pc 0.598 0.864 0.696 0.782 0.738 0.757 0.707 0.779 0.758 0.710 0.824 0.676 0.868 Notes: pvc : average variance extracted, pc : composite reliability, (*): reversed item Table Discriminant validity Extraversion Openess to experience Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neucroticism Brand personality appeal Brand love Brand loyalty Notes: Diagonal elements (in bold) represent the square root of the AVE; Off-diagonal elements (included in the lower triangle of the matrix) represent the standardized correlations among constructs 4.3 Structural result and hypotheses testing The result of SEM showed a good fit to data of the structural model, with χ2=680.286 (p=0.000), GFI = 0.899, TLI = 0.967, CFI = 0.970, and RMSEA = 0.035 Hypotheses testing results indicated two out of three hypotheses were supported, except H3 In more details, brand personality appeal was positively related to brand love (β = 0.522, p-value