Measuring Brand Personality - Construct Validity Of A Short Version Of A Brand Personality Scale

Brand personality has gained a lot of attention in marketing research and brand management. For measuring these „human characteristics associated with a brand“ (Aaker, 1997, p. 347), several empirically validated questionnaires have been developed. Due to the high number of items of brand personality scales, their use in studies evaluating many diff erent brands and additional constructs is limited. Therefore the question arises, how brand personality could be measured reliably and validly using short questionnaire versions. This paper evaluates construct validity of a short questionnaire version based on a German brand personality scale (Mäder, 2005) comparing the short version with the original version in an online study with 298 students at Pforzheim University. Brand personality had to be rated for two German brands of the food retailing market. Results indicate high construct validity of the short scale, though the original version shows slightly higher stability when it comes to the underlying dimensionality of the scale and the prediction of the overall attitude towards the brands based on the different personality facets. Implications for further research and a more extensive validation including additional aspects of validity and reliability are discussed.