The preliminary investigation of brands’ advertising personality on young viewers’ perceptions

Most of the multinational companies believe that advertising plays a crucial role in building a brand. Developing and maintaining a powerful brand in the fullest sense requires a convincing promise of value/benefit for consumers and conforming that the promise is kept. Mostly, the literature reviews brand personality as one of the core dimensions of the brand identity and perhaps as the closest variable to the consumers’ buying process. All marketing communication tools, especially advertising, are pivotal to create awareness, influence and form a desire to buy a specific brand. This paper attempts to explore the tendency to present how one company manages to create two different brand personalities on the same sector that are supported by advertising. Keywords: Brand personality, advertising personality, Turkey’s personal care market, perceptual mapping 1. INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW The concept of ‘branding’ role is well understood in advertising especially forming a positive attitude towards a specific product. A brand –an intangible assetis the most valuable asset of companies. Manufacturer and retailer companies have built up brand value through the development of a differentiated brand personality, a long-term bond with its customers and creating reputation backed up by advertising and other forms of brand communication support tools. Advertising is a form of communication. In a sense it is not a conversation but it is an effective tool to get attention, provide information with entertainment, persuade, remind, influence and try to create a response, such as a sale (Cook, 2001). Most of the marketing efforts are focused on what customers want and need rather than what they really are. Personal traits haven’t been the major factor for marketers but they lead a proper understanding of the cluster of customers in a market segment. In order to ensure that advertisements are able to reach the target group, advertisers need to select the right medium. 2. THE THEORETICAL DIMENSION OF BRAND PERSONALITY Branding especially brand personality have been topics of interest for many years. According to Kotler (2000) a brand can be defined as ``a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them which is intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or AJIT-e: Online Academic Journal of Information Technology 2016 Winter/Kış – Cilt/Vol: 7 ‐ Sayı/Num: 22 DOI: 10.5824/1309‐1581.2016.1.006.x http://www.ajit‐e.org/?menu=pages&p=details_of_article&id=181 84 group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors''. Aaker (1997) defined brand personality as ‘‘the set of human characteristics associated with a brand’’. Simply, if a brand were a person, how would it be described? Moreover, brand personality is given power for marketers in order to visualize how it is look like and does it reflect the same image of the buyer. According to Keller (1993); marketers should try to concern personality with how people attach a human personality to the brand itself, rather than to what the brand does. Brand personality is perhaps as the closest variable to the consumers’ buying process. Mostly, brand personality has mixed by the term brand identity. Kapferer (1998) defined ‘brand identity’ as underlining the significance of the supply side perspective on the brand concept: ‘before knowing how we are perceived, we must know who we are ’. In the literature, there are many studies that underscore building strong and accurate personalities of the brands. Birdwell (1964) investigated the relationship between selfconcept and perceived personality of cars. Parallel to Birdwell, Dolich (1969) researched the influence of perceived personality of cars on consumers’ self-image. However, due to a lack of common theory and consensual taxonomy of personality attributes to describe products and brands, differently, Aaker (1997), developed the big five model of human personality as the brand personality scale (BPS), which consists of five generic dimensions. This theory has proposed that people prefer objects whose psychological characteristics are congruent with their own psychological characteristics. Aaker’s (1997) brand personality dimensions have been widely implemented using various consumer brands within different product categories and across different cultures. In Turkey, Aksoy & Ozsomer (2007) have adopted the five dimensions of brand personality scale to Turkish culture: Excitement-daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date-, Sinceritydomestic, honest, cheerful, genuine-, competence-, Sophistication-glamorous, presentations, charming, romantic-and Ruggedness-tough, strong, outdoorsy, ruggedA well established brand personality influences consumer preference and develops stronger emotional ties, trust, and loyalty with the brand (Fournier, 1998). Similarly, a distinctive and emotionally attractive advertisement personality is shown to leverage the perceived image of advertising and influence consumer choice behavior. 3. THEORIES ABOUT ADVERTISEMENT PERSONALITY Advertising creates visibility for a brand through exposure, attention, pulling power, making an impression and engraving a mental note (Wells et al, 2006). Television (TV) advertisement is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format. TV advertisement conveys a message to market a product or service. Consumers are suggested as active receptors to persuasion attempts. Unsurprisingly, several studies have shown that consumers have both positive and negative attitudes toward advertising. On the positive side, advertising is seen as entertaining, informative, persuasive and playing a suitable role in the economy. On the negative side, it is perceived as manipulative, possibly corrupted, and boosting materialism (Meenaghan, 2001). The Preliminary Investigation of Brands’ Advertising Personality on Young Viewers’ Perceptions D. Z. B. ŞAHİNOĞLU, F. YILDIRIM http://www.ajit‐e.org/?menu=pages&p=details_of_article&id=181 85 The importance of advertising is forming an awareness and knowledge in memory to consumer decision-making process. Understanding the content and structure of a brand through advertisement may influence what comes to mind when a consumer thinks about a brand (Keller, 1993). There is a general understanding of communication tool effect under conditions of ‘high involvement’ is different than under ‘low involvement’. Individuals focus their cognitive resources on a limited number of stimuli in the environment. Advertisement is a powerful stimuli for brands. While processing any information, individuals must decide on which stimuli to attend to and the amount of attention to devote to (Mitchell, 1981). This brings the issue of getting involved with a specific brand in order to get curious about its flow of information. After all, the meaning of an ad is created in the perception of the viewer who receives the message, and it might be different from the advertiser’s intended response (Stern, 1991). Consumer researchers have defined involvement in terms of specific issue or product under consideration (Lastovicka and Gardner, 1979). If a consumer has a high interest level to advertised brand than high involvement will appeal to advertisement’s content. According to empirical evidence, the effectiveness of every advertisement is increased when the message is tailored to the different personality types rather than to demographic categories. Each personality trait is associated with certain attitudes. Hence, the five personality traits (agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience and conscientiousness) (De Raad, 2000) are the key issues to be understood in order to pursue an attitude for a particular product/brand. These traits identify the degree of each factor that an individual possesses. Extraversion represents a preference to be around others. It is the trait that deals with a person’s social behaviors, willingness to express opinions and leadership. Agreeableness describes how we relate to others including tolerance and acceptance. In addition, agreeableness represents an eagerness for communion. Conscientiousness refers to a tendency to push toward goals and act dutifully. It encompasses self-discipline and dependability. Neuroticism is the tendency to experience unpleasant emotions and often is referred to as the anxiety factor. Openness to experience describes the willingness to enjoy new experiences and ideas. It includes creativity, preference for the complex and willingness to accept change (De Raad, 2000). The level of involvement of the viewer with the product and the expertise of the source are positively correlated with the influence of personal traits. It is logical to highlight that different people may have different preferences, and may form positive attitude when exposed to an advertising stream that matches their personality and interest. Gender differences might also be conveyed that men and women perceive others in different manners. Both men and women tend to consult on male traits like ambitious and aggressive, while they tend to attribute to women traits like caring and giddy (Schneider et al, 1979). However, marketers are still struggling to find ways to evaluate the natural impact of advertisements on especially young adult females while purchasing a specific brand. So, it is important to develop insights into the young adult females’ comprehension process, while AJIT-e: Online Academic Journal of Information Technology 2016 Winter/Kış – Cilt/Vol: 7 ‐ Sayı/Num: 22 DOI: 10.5824/1309‐1581.2016.1.006.x http://www.ajit‐e.org/?menu=pages&p=details_of_article&id=181 86 creating content and intent of advertisements of the influential products to form positive socialization in the modern society. 4. TURKEY’S PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS MARKET The popularity of using personal care and cosmetic products have increased globally both for males and females. Despite the fact that the pe