ABSTRACT
In today’s ever-changing digital and connected world, the importance of brands is more prevalent than ever. Given that consumers nowadays have easy access to a nearly endless assortment of products and services from all over the world, the need for brand managers to differentiate from competing brands and increase customers’ brand commitment by carefully establishing compelling brand identities and building close, emotional brand relationships with their customers is steadily increasing (Sweeney and Brandon 2006). Brand personality captures a major component of brand identity and has gained increasing interest both from researchers and managers alike, also due to its important implications for brand performance (e.g., Aaker 1997; Batra et al. 2010; Geuens et al. 2009; Malär et al. 2011; Staplehurst and Charoenwongse 2012).
