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ABSTRACT
Brand personality refers to human personality traits associated with a brand. The results of this study conducted in Thailand reveal that, for the fast-food brand KFC, the brand personality dimension of competence has more influence on brand association and brand attractiveness than the other four dimensions (sincerity, excitement, sophistication, and ruggedness). In addition, brand association appears to partially mediate the influence of the competence dimension of brand personality on brand attractiveness. Implications and future study directions conclude the study report.
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INTRODUCTION
For a fast-food restaurant which is defined as a "branded convenience food" (Mohammad, Barker and Kandampully 2005, p. 97), a brand personality is thought to be an essential part of this business. An extensive review of literature (e.g., Jones, Hiller, Shears and Clarke-Hill 2002; Murase and Bojanic 2004) indicates that brand personality has become an important aspect of stability and growth of a fast-food restaurant. Traditionally, a fast-food restaurant commonly used a pricing strategy to compete in the market (Mohammad, Barker and Kandampully 2005). Current thinking is that such strategy alone can be easily imitated by competitors and, therefore, could be less effective in creating a sustainable competitive advantage for a fastfood restaurant. Unlike a price reduction strategy, brand personality has been acknowledged by many service marketing researchers to have a great influence on consumer behaviors in various aspects such as consumer preference and usage (Sirgy 1982; Batra, Lehmann and Singh 1993; Simoes and Dibb 2001). Therefore, creating a strong and favorable brand personality is likely to be a better way for a fast-food restaurant to differentiate itself from the competitors in the long run.
Brand personality has attracted interests from marketing researchers for several decades (RojasMendez, Erenchun-Podlech and Silva-Olave 2004). Initial research in brand personality examined different brands in several product categories and demonstrated that consumers perceived brands in terms of five orthogonal personality dimensions: sincerity (e.g., Hallmark), competence (e.g., The Wall Street Journal), excitement (e.g., MTV), sophistication (e.g., Guess), and ruggedness (e.g., Malboro; Monga and Lau-Gesk 2007). This stream of research, however, focused on brands predominantly characterized by one single dimension of brand personality (Monga and Lau-Gesk 2007) although a brand may simultaneously possess multiple dimensions of brand personality. Research examining the relative impact...