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Consumers' implicit theories about personality influence their brand personality judgments
Author(s) -
Mathur Pragya,
Jain Shailendra P.,
Maheswaran Durairaj
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of consumer psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.433
H-Index - 110
eISSN - 1532-7663
pISSN - 1057-7408
DOI - 10.1016/j.jcps.2012.01.005
Subject(s) - personality , psychology , brand extension , extension (predicate logic) , implicit personality theory , malleability , context (archaeology) , social psychology , salient , big five personality traits , brand awareness , advertising , computer science , business , encryption , paleontology , ciphertext , artificial intelligence , biology , programming language , operating system
Three studies document that consumers' implicit theories about the fixedness/malleability of personality guide brand personality updating in a brand extension context. The first two studies show that extension fit with the parent brand impacts brand personality updating only for incremental (vs. entity theorists). Specifically, for incremental theorists, brand personality is enhanced (vs. diluted) when extension fit is poor (vs. good), and only when brand personality is salient. The third study identifies conditions under which entity theorists focus on brand personality. Interestingly, overall evaluations of the parent brand and extension vary only with extension fit. Implications of our research are discussed.