Title: Exploring the brand personalities of Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn

Authors: M. Mutsikiwa; T. Maree

Addresses: Department of Marketing Management, University of Pretoria, South Africa ' Department of Marketing Management, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract: For decades, marketers have applied brand personality to brands and organisations in order to facilitate relationships with consumers. This phenomenon has been studied across different product categories and industries however; it has not been reported for social media brands. Aaker's brand personality scale (BPS), rooted in the big five personality theory, has been the preferred measurement for most studies on brand personality. This research assessed the structure of the BPS across different samples on three social media platforms - Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The findings indicate that social media brand personalities do not follow the original structure of the BPS.

Keywords: brand personality; consumers; marketing; online; personality theory; social media; social network sites; SNS; Facebook; YouTube; LinkedIn.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2019.103459

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 2019 Vol.13 No.4, pp.285 - 301

Received: 16 Mar 2018
Accepted: 11 Nov 2018
Published online: 06 Nov 2019 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article