Title: A clash of personality? The relationship among consumer personality, brand personality and word-of-mouth with social-cognitive perspective: generation as the moderator

Authors: Shu-Hsien Liao; Yu-Chun Chung; Keng-Yi Lin

Addresses: Department of Management Sciences, Tamkang University, Tamsui Dist., New Taipei City 25137, Taiwan ' Department of Management Sciences, Tamkang University, Tamsui Dist., New Taipei City 25137, Taiwan ' Department of Management Sciences, Tamkang University, Tamsui Dist., New Taipei City 25137, Taiwan

Abstract: Personality is an inner psychological term known as a set of specified factors distinguishing from an individual to other individuals. Such significant differences not only influence consumer behaviour and his/her reflection to a specific brand, but also lead to a variety of effective marketing strategies for brand manufacturers to meet the needs of consumers. The study mainly aims to investigate the relationship among consumer personality (CP), brand personality (BP), and word-of-mouth (WOM) while generation plays a moderating role with social-cognitive perspective through factor analysis, CP is divided into various types, including 'conservativeness', 'openness', 'conscientiousness', and 'extraversion'. On the other hand, BP is divided into 'excitement', 'ruggedness', 'competence', and 'sophistication'. Based on 405 collected samples of Nike shoes users, we use structural equation modelling to examine several hypotheses in this study. The empirical results indicate that: 1) BP serves as a partial mediator between CP and WOM; 2) Generation has the moderating effect on the relationship among CP, BP and WOM. Moreover, this study discovers that Nike has higher positive WOM when consumers tend to have conservativeness personalities or consider Nike as a competence brand.

Keywords: consumer personality; brand personality; word-of-mouth; WOM; consumer behaviour; social-cognitive perspective; SCP; generation; moderating effect; structural equation modelling; SEM; Nike shoes; Nike shoe users; conservative; openness; conscientious; extravert; excitement; ruggedness; competence; sophistication.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2015.071096

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2015 Vol.21 No.1/2/3, pp.111 - 126

Received: 04 Feb 2014
Accepted: 28 Feb 2015
Published online: 12 Aug 2015 *

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