Determining the antecedents and consequences of the airline brand personality

Purpose: This study investigates air passengers’ perceptions of the brand personalities of airlines and explores the relationships between the brand personality and its antecedent factor, the country-of-origin of the airlines, and the consequent factor which is the purchase intentions to the corresponding airlines.Design/methodology/approach: The study uses a questionnaire survey containing air passengers’ trip characteristics and demographics and three main scales: country-of-origin, brand personality, and purchase intentions to collect the data of 490 respondents flying from Kaohsiung to Macao. The passengers are from three types of airlines: an international airline with a global network, a regional airline, and a low-cost carrier. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to investigate the differences in the perceptions of brand personalities of airlines and several models were developed to determine the antecedent and the consequent factors of airline brand personality.Findings: The air passengers’ perceptions regarding the brand personalities of different types of airlines were significantly different. The country-of-origin of airlines was proved as a significant factor for the brand personality. The brand personality also significantly influenced passengers’ loyalty to the corresponding airlines. Moreover, some demographic and trip characteristics such as personal monthly income, memberships in the airline’s frequent flyer program, and experiences with the airlines were also determined as the significant variables to impact passengers’ loyalties.Originality/value: The concept of brand personality has been explored by various researches but few related to airline management and identified as a key element to brand marketing. Particularly, low-cost carriers always implement different marketing strategies to create a distinctive position in their target customers’ mind and legacy airlines are also doing different things to retain their customers. Therefore, investigating passengers’ perceptions of airlines from the perspective of brand personality is also an important issue for airline management. Not only does this study prove the differences in passengers’ cognitions of brand personalities of a global network airline, a regional network airline, and a low-cost airline but conclude the determinants and influences of the brand personality.