Assessing brand personality associations of top-of-mind wine brands

Assessing brand personality associations of top-of-mind wine brands Ana Oliveira Brochado Rui Vinhas da Silva Peter LaPlaca Article information: To cite this document: Ana Oliveira Brochado Rui Vinhas da Silva Peter LaPlaca , (2015),"Assessing brand personality associations of top-of-mind wine brands", International Journal of Wine Business Research, Vol. 27 Iss 2 pp. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJWBR-05-2014-0025


1. Introduction
The wine market is characterised by an ever-increasing plethora of brands that compete against each other (Jarvis and Goodman, 2005). Therefore, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate any wine product from its competitors in what has become an extremely fragmented market.
Acquiring and sustaining a competitive advantage in the wine industry depends heavily on customers' recognition of a particular wine's identity and quality (Santos and Ribeiro, 2012). Wines that achieve greater brand awareness are more likely to be chosen by discerning consumers (Koll and von Wallpach, 2009).
Managing public brand knowledge by establishing brand image and awareness has become a crucial task of brand managers (Collins-Dodd and Louviere, 1999). Marketers, therefore, are increasingly concerned with getting their brands known and recognised by ensuring that these brands are distinct from others based on brand personality traits (Parker, 2009). Brand personality is a key element of any successful brand (Eisend and Stokburger-Sauer, 2013) and needs to be viewed as a vital component of brand positioning and differentiation strategies (Valette-Florence and De Barnier, 2013). The conceptualisation of brands as personalities enables marketers to position their brands through emotional attributes and to develop enduring consumer-brand relationships (Ahmad and Thyagaraj, 2014).
A number of studies have analysed brand personality perceptions in a wine market context (Boudreaux and Palmer, 2007;Orth and Malkewitz, 2008;Heslop et al., 2010;Elliot and Barth, 2012). In general, these studies focused on experimental wine labels and paid a considerable amount of attention to the antecedents of brand personality and correlations between facets of brand personality and purchase intent. The assessment of brand personality of wines, however, has received less interest in the literature.
The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine customers' brand knowledge of wines produced in a selected Portuguese viticulture area and, in so doing, investigate the constructs of brand awareness and personality. More specifically, we sought to understand how consumers organise their memories of brands with the highest awareness, as well as to test whether these brands are clearly distinct in terms of personality traits.
2 This paper is organised as follows. First, we provide a selective review of the branding literature to define the theoretical foundation for this research. Next, we present the methodology, discussing the data sources and the data analysis techniques used. We then describe the empirical study, and, finally, we conclude with a discussion of the findings and their implications for wine marketers.

Literature Review
Previous studies have concluded that brands are particularly relevant to the wine decision-making process (Johnson and Bruwer 2007;Atkin and Johnson, 2010). Wine consumers often choose wine brands within a set of 'safe brands' that are associated with consistent quality in consumers' memories. Accordingly, they seek out regions and brands with a track record of creating pleasant experiences of wine consumption for consumers (Bruwer and Wood, 2005;Schamel, 2006). Therefore, brand knowledge plays a positive role in wine choices by lowering the level of perceived risk (Mitchell and Greatorex, 1989) inherent to purchase decisions involving alternative offerings.

Brand Knowledge: Brand Awareness and Image
A consumer's brand knowledge is defined by descriptive and evaluative brand-related information that is shaped by individualised inferences stored in memories (Keller, 1993), thus capturing how brands are perceived in the customer's mind. Brand knowledge directly affects each consumer's responses to brands (Esch et al., 2006) and comprises two brand related notions: brand awareness and brand image (Keller, 1993). Consumers need to be aware of a brand to develop a brand image (Keller, 2008).
Brand awareness refers to the 'likelihood that a brand name will come to mind and the ease with which it does so' (Keller, 1993, p. 3). Brand awareness can be conceptualised as having different levels, ranging from brand recognition, at the lowest level, to brand recall directly from memory, at the highest level. Whereas brand recall is defined as the 'consumers' ability to retrieve the brand in a given product category', brand recognition represents the 'consumers' ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when given the brand as a cue' (Keller, 4 brands as personalities helps position brands through emotional attributes and develop enduring customer-brand relationships (Ahmad and Thyagaraj, 2014). Since brand personality appears to be less imitable than other tangible product attributes, the dimension of brand personality can yield a more sustainable competitive advantage (Ang and Lim, 2006).
A number of antecedents and consequences of brand personality have been identified (Eisend and Stokburger-Sauer, 2013). Brand personality perceptions can result from interactions with human personifications of brands (e.g. company employees and other customers) and from non-human dimensions (e.g. advertisements, prices, brand name and intrinsic characteristics of products, including packaging design).
Moreover, when drawing upon the pioneering work of Aaker (1997), marketers have also been intrigued by the implications and pragmatic potential of the concept of brand personality. As a result of their stable and unique nature, brand personality perceptions can affect the type and strength of the relationships that consumers maintain with brands. Different variables have been considered in the study of the consequences of brand personality including brand loyalty (Kressmann et al., 2006), brand preferences (Kim, 2000, brand trust (Louis and Lombart, 2010) and brand attachment (Sung and Tinkham, 2005). A meta-analysis study on brand personality revealed that the effects of brand personality are stronger for mature brands than for brands early in their life cycle (Eisend and Stokburger-Sauer, 2013).
The brand personality scale proposed by Aaker (1997) is the most widely used brand personality measure, and it has been shown to be reliable and generalisable across different brands and product categories (Parker, 2009).
The framework is comprised of five brand personality dimensions -'sincerity', 'excitement', 'competence', 'sophistication' and 'ruggedness' -which subsume 42 individual aspects clustered around 15 facets. Aaker's framework is an adaptation of the big five personality model, popular in psychology research (McCrae and Costa, 1989). In a follow up study, Valette-Florence and De Barnier (2013) concluded that dimensions within the same scale can vary between different fields of application and that 'sincerity' and 'competence' have the strongest influence on brand success variables.

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A few studies have addressed brand personality in the wine market context. For example, Boudreaux and Palmer (2007) investigated the influence of wine labels' design elements on brand personality and the impact of brand personality on purchase intent. In their study, consumers from the U.S. evaluated experimental labels for wines identified as Cabernet Sauvignon on 10 facets of the Aaker brand personality scale. Orth and Malkewitz (2008) examined how five prototype holistic package designs (i.e. massive, contrasting, natural, delicate and nondescript) were perceived by U.S. wine consumers in terms of brand personality, using the 15 facets and five dimensions of Aaker's framework. Heslop et al. (2010) analysed how label information affects perceptions of the quality of wines. Consumers from Canada were asked to characterise fictitious Cabernet Sauvignon wines in terms of 25 personality characteristics. The previously cited study by Elliot and Barth (2012) attempted to analyse the wine label design and personality preferences of millennials. Consumers in the 19 to 22-years-old category evaluated an experimental wine label developed by students and three commercially comparable wines in terms of 10 facets of brand personality.
Antecedents of wine brand personality include the country-of-origin of wines, fictional brand names (Heslop et al., 2010) and aspects of label design, such as colour, illustration and design layout (Boudreaux and Palmer, 2007;Elliot and Barth, 2012). In addition, holistic package design concepts (Orth and Malkewitz, 2008) have been demonstrated to have an impact on brand personality perceptions. Boudreaux and Palmer (2007) concluded that the top two brand personality facets most strongly correlated with wine purchase intent are 'successful' and 'charming', followed by 'spirited' and 'up-to-date'. Their study also revealed that, although strongly conveyed by some brands, the 'ruggedness' dimension appears to be irrelevant to purchase intent. The authors hypothesised that this conclusion would likely change for wines chosen for barbecues. The study by Elliot and Barth (2012) found that 'spirited' and 'up-to-date' brand personality facets (i.e. the 'excitement' dimension) appeal to new wine consumers.

Portuguese Green Wine Market
Green wine is a traditional Portuguese product that is the target of this study. This wine is a unique product, only produced in the Demarcated Region of Vinho Verde, located in the northwest of Portugal. The vineyards occupy 6 an area of almost 21 thousand hectares, corresponding to 15% of Portugal's viticultural areas. Green wine (a literal translation of 'vinho verde') is a young wine as opposed to a matured wine, which should be consumed within a year of bottling. Green wine is medium in alcohol, and it is mostly consumed in the summer because of its fresh quality. The grape varieties in this region were approved by the Ministry of Agriculture's Ordinance No.
428/2000, 2000/7/17, and an important organisation in this sector is the Comissão de Viticultura da Região dos Vinhos Verdes. According to the organisation, Wines of Portugal, green wines go well with salads, seafood and fish, as well as Thai or other Southeast Asian cuisines.

Sample and Fieldwork
The target population in this study was Portuguese consumers of green wine residing in or near the green wine region. Indeed, green wine is mostly consumed in the north of Portugal. A convenience sampling procedure was used, and data were collected through a face-to-face survey in three retail stores and a wine exhibition. Since green wine consumption is more strongly linked to summer, the data were collected in July. This sampling method was chosen to make it easier to target respondents who purchase and consume green wine. Potential respondents were screened for at least occasional green wine consumption during the previous six months in order to ensure the questionnaires' completion. This sampling procedure resulted in a convenience sample of 330 green wine consumers that were interviewed.

Procedure
This study adopted a two-step approach. First, a focus group (N=8) was held to identify green wine brands with strong awareness levels to be used later in the main survey and to pre-test the translation of the 42 individual items on Aaker's brand personality scale. Focus group participants were evenly balanced in terms of gender (four females and four males), and the average age of participants was 31.2 (SD=4.7) years old. The focus group was moderated by a researcher and audio-recorded, lasting for 90 minutes. To ensure the accurate translation of the 42 items from English to Portuguese, a parallel translation approach (Malhotra and Birks, 2007) was used with two bilingual interpreters.
Brand awareness was measured by unaided recall. Thus, focus group participants were asked to name all he brands of green wine they could remember. They were then asked to recall wine brands using cues such as 7 consumption occasions (e.g. meals, romantic dates or parties), places (e.g. supermarkets, bars or restaurants), people (e.g. alone or in a group) and purchase situations (e.g. for self-consumption, friends and gifts). The following brands were identified by the focus group: Aveleda Fonte, Casal Garcia, Deu-la-Deu, Alvarinho, This focus group session was then followed by the second step of a survey to collect data. The questionnaire contained the following sections: (1) wine consumption behaviour (e.g. frequency and involvement), (2) brand recall and brand recognition, (3) brand personality traits and (4) general demographic items.
The second section of the questionnaire included one open-ended question pertaining to brand recall. Green wine consumers were asked to name the first three green wine brands to come to their minds. The next section asked participants to focus on the first brand that they had recalled, that is, the brand with which respondents had sufficient familiarity and involvement that they would be motivated and able to understand and process the stimulus materials. Then, for this particular brand, they were asked to pick the individual traits that best described that specific brand. This approach reduced the data collection demands imposed on respondents, since only binary data were required. In the final section of the questionnaire, the consumers surveyed provided demographic data, including gender, age and marital status.

Statistical Methods
This study employed multiple correspondence analysis (Greenacre, 1984) to identify the relative positioning of the top-of-mind green wine brands. Multiple correspondence analysis is a well-known technique for scaling qualitative data in marketing research, which allows a simplified analysis of cross-tabular data to be performed, collected in the form of numerical frequencies on a low-dimensional, joint space map (Hair et al., 2009). This perceptual mapping technique is suited for exploratory data analysis. In this study, it allowed a clear and easy identification of the associations between wine brands and brand personality facets (Opoku et al., 2007). The most interesting graphical output of multiple correspondence analysis is the perceptual map, a symmetric map of categories including both rows and columns. The horizontal axis displays the dimension of greatest variation in 8 the data, while the vertical axis shows the second greatest variation. As a rule, categories that are closer together than others are more similar in their underlying structure, whereas longer distances imply dissimilarity.
In order to develop the perceptual map, our statistical analysis followed a three-step approach. First, frequency tables were used to identify the top-of-mind green wine brands. Second, the six top-of-mind brands were crosstabled with the personality items consumers associated with those brands. Chi-square tests were used to select the personality items to be included into the perceptual map. Finally, multiple correspondence analysis was used to find the relative positioning of the top-of-mind green wine brands. Therefore, this procedure was built upon the personality adjectives consumers associated with the first brand they recalled.

Sample Characteristics
In total, 41% of the respondents were female, and 59% were male. With respect to age groups, 25% of the respondents were between 18 and 25 years old, 43% between 25 and 35, 19% between 36 and 45 and 10% between 46 and 54. Of the total number of respondents, 55% were married/cohabiting, 37% single and 8% divorced/widowed. Approximately 44% of the study sample was self-described as being at least somewhat knowledgeable about wine. Specifically, 27.5% classified themselves as somewhat knowledgeable about wine, 8.5% quite knowledgeable and 8% as experts. Only 4% of the respondents were new to wine, and 52% claimed to know only a little about wine. A majority of 73.5% of the respondents bought green wine mainly at grocery stores, 15.5% directly from the producer and 11% from wine shops. In the study sample, 11% of respondents drank green wine once a day, 14% two or three times a week and 7% once a week.

Recall and Recognition Frequencies
In section two of the questionnaire, 106 brands were spontaneously recalled. The first brands identified by consumers were counted for frequencies in order to obtain data concerning top-of-mind brands. Muralhas de Monção, Casal Garcia, Deu-la-Deu, Gazela, Quinta Aveleda and Ponte de Lima were the brands that registered the highest unaided recall rates.

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Brand recognition based on the focus group discussion was also assessed by counting the number of respondents who recognised each brand. The six most frequently recognised brands were Gazela, Casal Garcia, Muralhas de Monção, Gatão, Quinta da Aveleda and Ponte de Lima. The results revealed that some brands with high assisted awareness, such as Gatão and Ponte da Barca, exhibited low recall frequencies. Table 2 presents brand recall frequencies along with examples of brands that were recalled and recognised.

Top-of-Mind Brands and Consumer Profile
Top-of-mind brands were also cross-tabulated with consumers' demographic profiles. The chi-square tests (with Monte Carlo adjustment) were statistically significant at the 1% level for gender, age group and marital status.
Overall, Muralhas de Monção, Quinta da Aveleda and Ponte de Lima were the most spontaneously recalled by married males, while Casal Garcia, Gazela and Deu-la-Deu were remembered by single female consumers. Casal Garcia and Gazela came to the youngest consumers' minds first, whereas Ponte de Lima was recalled by older consumers.

Brand Personality Associations
According to Keller (2003), the ideal representation of perceptual maps provides a blueprint of brand knowledge and needs to be as parsimonious as possible. The input data for this study consisted of yes/no responses for each top-of-mind brand on each attribute. Frequency analysis identified how often brand personality traits were assigned to brands by wine consumers. In this study, the six brands that accounted for 80% of the top-of-mind awareness were analysed further. From a total of 42 items, 21 were not considered due to the small number of selections, including the following: 'down-to-earth', 'family-oriented', 'small-town', 'cheerful', 'sentimental', 'up-to-date', 'independent', 'hard working', 'intelligent', 'technical', 'corporate', 'leader', 'upper-class', 'good looking', 'feminine', 'smooth', 'outdoorsy', 'masculine', 'western', 'tough' and 'rugged'. The items including the 'ruggedness' dimension -'outdoorsy', 'masculine', 'western', 'tough' and 'rugged' -were not selected by any of the respondents.
Of the remaining 21 items, only 11 showed a significant association with the brands considered, based on the chi-square tests, and these were retained for further analysis. The relevant personality traits were: 'real', 'honest', 'glamorous', 'reliable', 'successful', 'confident', 'charming', 'secure', 'cool', 'young' and 'trendy'. The next table presents the cross-tabulation results and the chi-square tests for each of these 11 personality traits.

Table 4. Personality Traits by Top-of-Mind Wine Brands
Subsequently, the brands and attributes were displayed in the same multidimensional space. The multiple correspondence analysis allowed us to look at the structure of brand personality perceptions for the six most frequently cited brands. This perceptual map revealed the underlying structure of the top-of-mind green wine brands in relation to underlying brand personality items and provided information about how the wine brands are positioned vis-à-vis each other. The square root of the trace (i.e. sum of the eigenvalues) of the decomposition was 0.58, well above the cut-off value of 0.2, indicating a dependency between the rows and the columns of the contingency table (Bendixen, 2003).
In order to determine the dimensionality of the solution, the eigenvalues and the cumulative proportions explained by the dimensions need to be analysed. Due to its ease of display and interpretability, the twodimensional solution is popular among researchers. For these reasons, a two-dimensional correspondence plot was selected, which yielded a retention of 80.02% of the total variance across the first two dimensions. The eigenvalues for the first and second dimensions were 0.335 and 0.263, respectively. The first dimension accounted for 52.67% of the total variance, and the second dimension exhibited an explained proportion of 27.35%. An asymmetric plot of the brands and the personality traits is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Perceptual Map
The perceptual map shows the relative positioning of the six top-of-mind wine brands for each personality trait.
Some personality items overlap between wine brands. Muralhas de Monção and Quinta da Aveleda both represent 'secure', 'reliable', 'successful' and 'confidence' traits. Therefore, consumers perceive these two brands with the facets of 'success' and 'reliability' of the 'competence' dimension of brand personality.
Gazela and Quinta da Aveleda both evoke 'cool', 'young' and 'trendy' traits. The first two items represent the 'spiritedness' and the third corresponds to the 'daring' facets of the 'excitement' personality dimension.
Deu-la-Deu signifies 'glamorous' and 'charming', that is, the 'class' and 'charm' facets. Deu-la-Deu's brand personality is strongly associated with the 'sophistication' dimension. On the other hand, Ponte de Lima is strongly associated with the 'real' and 'honest' items. Ponte de Lima is strongly associated with the 'sincerity' dimension, perceived by wine consumers as associated with the 'honesty' facet. This is a quite positive result as none of the other green wine brands share a strong and distinct positioning in this dimension.
The perceptual map results can be construed as market strengths for the six top-of-mind brands. Indeed, all the brands were associated by wine consumers with at least one of the most relevant personality facets identified by previous studies. The study by Boudreaux and Palmer (2007) concluded that the personality facets most strongly correlated with wine purchase intent are 'successful', 'charming', 'spirited' and 'up-to-date'. In our study, 'successful' was associated with Muralhas de Monção and Quinta da Aveleda, 'charming' with Deu-la-Deu and 'spirited' with Casal Garcia and Quinta da Aveleda. Ponte de Lima was considered a 'sincere' wine, one of the most relevant personality dimensions for wine consumers according to Orth and Malkewitz (2008).
The youngest consumers recalled Casal Garcia and Gazela first, and they associated these brands with 'cool' and 'young' personality facets. The study by Elliot and Barth (2012) also concluded that 'spirited' personalities appeal to new wine consumers.
Overall, the perceptual map reveals that the top-of-mind green wine brands in Portugal are equipped with clear and distinctive brand personalities, as suggested by the research conducted for this study. The results also indicate that a small subset of brand personality attributes serve as significant cues for brand positioning. The 11 attributes that wine consumers most associate with the six top-of-mind green wine brands represent six facets of brand personality and four out of five dimensions of the Aaker brand personality scale, including 'competence', 'sincerity', 'sophistication' and 'excitement'. Each top-of-mind green wine brand is perceived as associated mainly with one personality dimension.

Conclusions
In the pursuit of market success, it is important for wineries to have a strong brand or stage of brands. Brand knowledge is known to influence consumers' reactions to brand related stimuli and to determine whether particular wines will be chosen over other wine brands. In this study, brand knowledge was evaluated with data gathered from wine consumers, through the concepts of brand awareness and brand personality perceptions.
Aaker's conceptualisation of brand personality was used to assess consumers' perceptions of top-of-mind green wine brands, by means of multiple correspondence analysis.

Theoretical Contribution
This research contributes to the findings of previous studies of the wine market that examined brand personality perceptions. From a theoretical point of view, it reflects the usage of the most popular instrument for brand personality measurement in a new market context, in which Aaker's brand personality dimensions were evaluated in reference to a specific region (northern Portugal) and a specific type of wine (green wine).
In assessing whether consumers perceive top-of-mind green wine brands as having clear and distinctive brand personalities, a relatively simple tool was used to identify and portray brand personality relative to other market players. Multiple correspondence analysis identified the brand personality items associated with each brand and compared the brand personalities of different wine labels. Using binary data as input, multiple correspondence analysis proved to be a useful technique to determine the perceived personality associations of brands.
The results provide evidence that Aaker's brand personality approach is applicable in this setting. However, the findings revealed that not all of Aaker's scale dimensions were applicable to wine brand personalities. The dimension of 'ruggedness' appears not to apply to green wines, perhaps because 'young' wines do not activate this personality dimension. Therefore, the results confirm the need to evaluate brand personality dimensions that are adapted to the particular sectors they address (Valette-Florence and De Barnier, 2013).

Managerial Implications
This paper is also provides value to wine industry practitioners. The results show that, in spite of the numerous green wine brands currently available in the market, six brands dominate in terms of brand awareness. Top-ofmind green wine brands are perceived by consumers with clear and distinctive brand personalities, and a small 13 subset of brand personality attributes produced this brand positioning. Therefore, brand personality management appears to be an important issue for brand differentiation. We believe that small to medium wineries within viticulture areas can build strong brand personalities and create distinctive brand images despite the limited resources at the wineries' disposal -particularly at a regional level. Indeed, of the six brands analysed, only two of them use mass media campaigns, and, overall, it has been quite challenging to generate broad awareness of the majority of these brands.
In this study, it was not possible to identify the antecedents of the perceived personalities from the data under analysis. They could be created by wine marketing (e.g. aspects of label and package design) and by consumers' experiences with the wines themselves or from other sources (e.g. recommendations from friends and experts).
However, the fact that consumers do perceive differences among top-of-mind green wines' brand personalities indicates that marketers of small to medium wineries could play on these perceptions to guide their marketing strategy. Marketers might be interested in either reinforcing the positioning that the green wine brand already has or, if actual consumer perceptions do not match the traits the companies would like, they could create marketing strategies to shift consumers' perceptions of their wine. In doing so, they need to emphasise the human characteristics of their wines while generating claims of hedonic benefits.
Brand personality cues can provide the means for making given brands stand out in the crowd, especially within product categories in which differences among the intrinsic attributes of competing brands are hard to discern. Furthermore, since brand personality appears to be less imitable than other product attributes, the dimensions of brand personality can yield a more sustainable competitive advantage. Consequently, a range of arguments indicate that brand personality provides a mechanism for wine managers to distinguish or differentiate their wines in the marketplace.
We can also argue that, in spite of the effort made -and collective investments used -to promote, as a whole, wines claiming a particular region of origin, there is ample room for small wineries to promote their wines and, in this way, to achieve a clear and distinctive positioning of its various brands of wine. Stated differently, when intrinsic cues are extremely hard to evaluate prior to consumption of particular products in marketplaces characterised by a large number of competing brands -of which wine is a good example -brand personality can be the focal point in establishing relevant differentiation. For a wine, then, claims of a strong, positive brand personality (i.e. effective communication of extrinsic and intrinsic cues) should lead to relatively higher product knowledge, in comparison to communication that seeks merely to inform consumers about a wine's intrinsic features.

Limitations and Future Research
There were a number of limitations associated with this study, including sample size and geographical coverage.
Since we used a convenience sample, the findings cannot be generalised to a wider population. A larger number of responses, particularly from consumers of other viticulture areas, would provide greater flexibility and accuracy. Another aspect that merits future research is to test whether wine brands have the same clear meaning for consumers living in different geographical areas. Despite its limitations, this exploratory study provides a preliminary look into the important issue of brand knowledge of green wine brands.
Testing whether consumers prefer and choose wines that they feel possess personalities similar to (congruent with) their own personalities also deserves future research. Finally, there is also a clear need for empirical research that investigates whether personality dimensions vary for different viticulture areas.