Brand personality

Brand personality and customer satisfaction

A brands personality is simply the human traits that are associated with brand. Brand personality helps to create a relationship between the customer and the and the brand. This is because there are people who like to associate themselves with a certain brand because of its personality. For example an individual may want to be associated with a brand which is perceived to be strong, men like associating with masculine products and women with feminine products. These relationships provide customer satisfaction because they get what they want from the brand which is the association.

Customers are more involved in the products that they perceive to satisfy their needs. These kinds of perception originate from the characteristics and features of the brand of which make up the personality of the brand. Brand involvement is positively associated with the awareness of the products attributes, the perception of its importance and also the customer risk perception. These aspects determine the level of involvement in a product and they have to think hard before making the decision on the brand or product to purchase with the aim of enjoying the maximum level of satisfaction.

The other factors that contribute to brand involvement are the a customers interest in the brand or product. When a customer is very interested in a product, they will takke time and effort to locate the brand that provides exactly what they are interested in. in most cases, the customers move from one shop to another trying to compare and match the products attributes to what interests them. This makes a product or brand high involving. For example, in the coffee market, the customers who find coffee interesting and at the same time important will not just buy any coffee brand in the market, they will go for a specific brand that they know meets their need and satisfies them accordingly.

A brands sign is also an important aspect when it comes to creation of a brand involvement. A sign is the degree to which the brand expresses the persons’ self. This becomes useful since people often like to associate themselves with the brand they buy and also a person can be defined according to the type of brand purchased. This relationship creates a level of involvement since the customer has to locate brands that are perfectly matched with their self image.

From the study there were a number of people who said that they bought the same brand of coffee all the time and if they did not find it on the shelves they would go elsewhere to look for it instead of picking the nearest brand. This reason was backed up by the fact that the specific brand met the customer’s expectation and served the purpose that coffee was supposed to serve, that is the brand satisfied their need for coffee.

Product involvement requires great amount of commitment from the customer. This commitment involves the feelings and the thoughts of the customer and for this to happen, the product needs to have attributes and characteristics or traits that the customer can center their thought on and even attach their feelings to. This clearly shows the importance of the brands personality in brand involvement. The level of the involvement in this case does not matter, whether low or high, a brands personality is crucial for involvement to occur, it gives the customer something to think about and connect with.

For customers to be interested in a product or brand, they must perceive the product to have the ability to meet specific goals of the customer. This bring in involvement since the customer must spend time and put in a lot of effort in searching for the particular brand that meet these important goals. This explains why it is not easy to switch from high involving products since it is a process before you find something similar to what you need. On the other hand, with low involvement brands, switching is common since no major decisions are required or any effort in choosing the brand. Some respondents claimed that they have never switched the brands of coffee that they use because they do not have a reason to. This is because in the low involvement brands, there are no important goals that are to be met by the product. Usually, the product is used as a formality or because people areas used to using the product in their daily activities and the lack of the product would not impact the customers. Many people claimed that they took coffee very few times in a week while others could not even recall because it was simply not important.

Low involvement products are the products that do not need a lot of consideration and decision when buying. They are frequently bought and there is little thought and effort that is put because they are not of great importance to the customer. The first time one makes the decision to buy these products is requires high involvement and after that, the customer identifies with the brand and more purchases of the same product may continue without the consideration of the risk factor. The risk factor is the possibility of making a wrong choice.

The reason as to why the risk factor is not important in purchasing low involvement goods is because there is a possibility that the impact of the wrong choice will not even be noticed since the customer is not keen on the results produced by the the product. This is also because the product is not as important to the customer and they ca do without it. In cases where the coffee customers do not find it important, they would not even remember the issue of risk or the satisfaction provided by the brand of coffee. This is because they do no t even know what is to be expected and are not in apposition to judge whether the decision was a risky one or not.

From the study, it is evident that many people do nit consider coffee to be very important to them, they refer to it as by the way and there is little attention to the brand used. What matters most is the fact that they get coffee and they pay little attention to the brand. This also explains the high numbers of respondents who have changed the brands for no apparent reason. Some changed the brands because they either did not notice as they just picked the brand that was the most reachable on the shelves.

Another reason as to why they changed the brands was because they heard someone talking highly of a different brand and since they stood to loose nothing, they decided to try the different brand so as to experience what was being praised. Some customers also changed brands because there were many that were available and they wanted to identify the difference and choose one that they will be loyal too.

On the other hand there are those respondents who are very sensitive to the brand of coffee they take. They attribute this to the quality of the coffee and also their individual preferences. These are the customers who rarely change the brands and when they do, they do not just pick any but they have certain brand in mind which act as substitutes for their favorite. There are very few cases of brand loyalty in the coffee market and this means that the brand personality is not emphasized in this market.

Customers like products that are closely related to their personal traits. For example people who perceive themselves as strong, they will go for products that are perceived to be strong. This is mainly because customers are known to buy products on the basis of what they mean. According to the findings of the relationship between the coffee brand personality and the respondents were almost a perfect match.

The people strongly greed with the fact that they were tough and used coffee and found it important, the also described their preferred coffee brand as the toughest brand in the market. This shows that there is a big relationship between the brand personality and the customers’ perception of themselves. This brings out the importance of personalizing a brand since it gives the customers something to relate themselves to and this helps in attracting and retaining the customers.

Products that posses strong personality are in a better position to satisfy the customers more than those brands which are perceived to have weak personality. This is simply because of the fact that people like to associate with the brands and no one would like to associate with the weakness of a brand. On the other hand, the brand that a person purchases can be used to determine the type of people they are. There is no one who associated the brand of coffee they took as boring since this would portray them as boring people since only a boring person would go for boring things.

Brand awareness is an important stage for building involvement, since customers must first be made aware of a brand in order to buy it. From the results of the study, the most respondents used the brand s that were well known. Most of them said that they knew the brand fron advets or because it has been in the market for long and since they do not have time nor the pressig need to match the product with many aspects, they have never tried to try out the new brands. On the other hand, the respondents who switch the brands frequently attribute the frquent changes to the fact they do so in the process of trying out new brands and not because they are disatisfied but because they have nothing to loose since they do not pay much attention on what coffee they drink.

Brand awarenes help companies to develop a brand preference and move customers closer to the point of purchase. In the procsses of trying out the new product that are being advertised, the customers may find a product that satisfied them in a better way than the others. Most impulse buying involves low involvement goods ahd it is therefore important to create high level of awareness for the low involvement goods so as to ensure that the brand is well known as it increases the chances for the customer to pick since they are familiar with the brand name.

Brand awareness is used as a heuristic or simple decision-making rule in low-involvement purchase situations. As a matter of fact creating brabd awareness for the low inolvement brands makes it easy for the customers to make a decision on which product to purchase since they are already aware of the existence of a certain product and its attributes.

Customers are aware of their self concept and they therefore make use of the image of the brand as a criterion in evaluating products. This means that when customers are deciding the products to buy, they first look at their personality and also their preferences which are in accordance to their persomality. They also look at the aspects or attributes that they would lke to be associated with. From this analyses, they go and find a product that matches their personality or self concept. For example, the people who find themselves charming will definately be attracted to a brand of coffee that is perceived or even advertised as a charming brand.

Since in low involving brands people do not pay much attention when looking for a brand to purchase, the customers rely alot on the message that is put across by advertsements and this could be on the label of the product or even through the media.

A brands image is the set of attributes and associations that are used by the customers to link to the brand. This is very important for products that have low involvement since the customers are not usually keen to know exactly what the products have over the other brands since their aim its o get anything that can satisfy that particular need. With a strong brand image, the customers will be attracted to the product and will have the brand in mind each time they think of satisfying that particular need.

Brand image is built in the memory of the consumer and it is defined by the awareness and associations geld in the consumer’s memory. It is very important for the low involvement products since ot will provide the customers with direction towards a popular and well know product that they are mostly likely to be loyal to that product since ii is stuck in their memory and having to change it would be difficult. It becomes the like only brand or product that the consumer knows and there is a positive relationship between self concept and the brand image. Customers self concept determines the type of products or brands they will go for. Self congruity is the degree of resemblance between the consumer self image and the brand image. This resemblance plays a major role when the customer is making a decision of whether or not to buy a certain product or brand. When responding to the questions on how people perceived their personality and also how they perceived their favorite coffee brands in human terms, it was clear that there was a relationship between how the customers perceived themselves and how they perceived their favorite coffee brand.

Customers having positive image of the brand in their minds are associating themselves with the brand. When customers match their self-image with the image of the brand they become congruent with the brand. Consumers are attracted to products wit high congruity. This is because the chances for satisfaction are high since there is a relationship between what the customer is and believes in and also making a purchase decisions on the everyday basis seems to have heuristic background. Low-involvement products do not need to pay much attention in buying decision. However, even in low involvement products range customers very often care what brand they are buying. This situation may be an effect of the brand awareness.

However, if customers care what brand they are choosing in low involvement products field it means that low-involvement products are not necessarily ‘low-involvement’ for them. In the case of coffee, the respondents who term coffee as very important to them cannot classify coffee as a low involvement. This is because they treat the purchase of coffee as they would treat other valuable products that are of high involvement. Theses consumers take time in deciding which brand to buy in respect to the quality and also the type of coffee. This because buying coffee can be complicated since there are many different brands in the market and also the brewing methods are different and there fore for the customers who consider coffee important, they have to be careful when choosing the brand since this will definitely impact on the preference of the consumer. Also these consumers may be forced to spend more on the product since they will be looking for the finest and purest coffee in the market and this can not be found at the same price as the other common brands of coffee.

There are the respondents who value coffee a lot and they will go an extra mile to ensure they get that value they desire. These respondents revealed that they would go out to look for their favorite brand of coffee if they did not find it on the shelves instead of settling for substitute. This is because they believe that the coffee should provide a certain level of satisfaction and there is no use taking coffee that does not meet and satisfy their need and that does not add value to them. These people don’t mind spending more on the coffee brand as long as it meets their standards of high quality coffee.

From the research, it is evident that the level of income has great effects on the coffee brand that is purchased by the customers. This is because there are those high income earners that did not consider coffee important to them and they did not find it very necessary yet they bought the brands that were very expensive. They said that the reason as to why they bought the expensive brands was because its price shows its level of quality and that it was associated with people of their class which was high class. In the same category of the high income earners, there are those people who find coffee taking to be an important part of their daily activities. These people are very choosy and precise on the kind of coffee tney take. To them, coffee is a highly involving product as they even purchase coffee from certain countries and with specific ingredients.

On the other hand, the middle and low incomers were faced by a financial problem and in some cases, the level of income dictated whether coffee was important to them or not. This is because high quality coffee is expensive and it is not a preying need and can de substituted with other products which are a bit cheaper and are not diversified as coffee. According to this group, coffee was viewed as just relevant and little or no effort was made in deciding on the brand to buy, in fact, the brand does not matter as long as the content is coffee and the prices are accommodating.

There are customers who do not mind taking fair trade coffee. There reason was that they were indifferent to the kind of coffee they took since it was not important and more so the brand was irrelevant. There were other respondents who claimed that they would never take fair trade coffee as it was not carefully manufactured and its quality was compromised. Another reason that was given for taking fair trade coffee was that the prices were affordable and this was evident in the low income earners. They also saw the need to support the coffee farmers by buying their products.

A number of customers confessed that they only took ground coffee while a great amount said that they drank instant coffee. Instant coffee was said to be more convenient and Decision making in low involvement goods is a challenge for many consumers event-day consumer research. However, product involvement may well be more complex than assumed thus far in that there may be an interaction effect with individual or personality characteristics.

There is certainly no argument that under some conditions, at least for the purchase of some categories of goods and services, consumers do behave as information processes, problem solving, and cognitive individuals reaching for a reasoned decision.

The low involvement decisions, the consumer unconcernedly purchases and consumes the product, tries new products, switches brands, obliviously ignores promotional activities and worries about the important events in his or her life – the automobile’s need.