An Empirical Assessment of the Configural Invariance of the Brand Personality Scale : A Comparison Involving Ethnic Groups and Brands in Canada

The author notes that brand personality, as one of the major components of brand identity, is a significant determinant of brand equity. His study investigates the configural invariance of a 42-item brand personality scale that was suggested by Jennifer L. Aaker in a 1997 article ("Dimensions of Brand Personality") by extending its use from her U.S. sample to a sample of Montreal Anglophone and Francophone brands and some popular brands in the rest of Canada. Following a translation of the brand personality scale from English to French and two pilot studies for selecting 30 brands for the study, the author executed a stratified area sampling plan to collect data from Anglophones and Francophones in Montreal. 1959 questionnaires were distributed by field workers using area sampling within each selected census tract and 596 usable responses were received by mail. After classifying the respondents into Anglophones or Francophones in terms of their responses to a multi-item scale involving language use and self-identification of ethnicity, the author conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to assess the configural invariance of the brand personality scale. His results suggest that the factor structure for both linguistic groups are different than the structure suggested by Aaker for her U.S. study. He notes that exploratory factor analysis of the data for each linguistic group suggests five factors as in Aaker's study. However, the author foung that the composition of the factors in terms of the items of the scale is different from hers. He argues that the orthogonal rotation of the factor pattern matrices to congruence shows that the factor loadings for the two Montreal linguistic groups are very similar.

Master's Thesis

Concordia University

Montreal

2001

viii-130p.

en