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INTRODUCTION
Personality is one of the major contributors of individualistic perception and behaviour (Sparks and Tucker, 1971; Greeno et al , 1973; Schaninger et al , 1980; Lastovicka and Joachimsthaler, 1988; Sojka and Giese, 2001; Schiffman and Kanuk, 2009). It is true otherwise also as behaviour can be better understood by studying personality (Ciccarelli and Meyer, 2008). Application of personality in understanding behaviour has made study of personality an indigenous task for researchers across the field of psychology, marketing and consumer behaviour.
1960's saw the advent of argument that like humans, products/brands also have personality and it began the era of brand personality studies (Birdwell, 1968; Dolich, 1969). The argument is still on with researchers like Hawkins et al (2008) arguing that irrespective of marketers wants, brands acquire personality which affects the brand purchase. Phenomenon of brands acquiring personality can be understood from the thought that brand have both tangible and intangible elements (Chernatony and Riley, 1997). Brand personality can be understood as one of the intangible elements of the brand (Ranjbar, 2010). Later on, brand personality was argued as a tool of differentiation (Plummer, 1985; Parker, 2009; Lin, 2010; Maehle and Shneor, 2010) and brand equity (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2009; Solomon, 2010).
In a major breakthrough, Aaker (1997) gave the definition of brand personality as 'the set of human characteristics associated with brands', which became the most accepted definition. Aaker also developed brand personality scale (BPS) by assigning human like characteristics to brands. These assigned characteristics are claimed to be omni-applicable across cultures for any product category. Aaker's BPS is reliable and globally accepted across brands of distinct products categories (Parker, 2009). Harris and Fleming (2005) surmise that Aaker's BPS is the biggest effort to measure brand personality till date.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Levy (1959) blueprinted that behaviour of consumer is affected by the intangible aspect of brand. Intangibility of brand communicates information apart from the functional benefit of brand. Importance of intangibility of brand can be understood from the argument that roots of personality of brand originates from the intangible part of brand. Brand personality evolves from (i) consumer association with brand, (ii) marketing communication and (iii) product attributes (Lin, 2010). Seldom is any brand that do not have these components applicable...