Online communication of brand personality

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Online communication of brand personalityA study of MBA programs of topbusiness schoolsRobert Ankomah OpokuDepartment of Marketing, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia

Albert Caruana 1

Centre for Communication Technology, University of Malta, Malta

Leyland PittSegal Graduate School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Pierre BerthonDepartment of Marketing, Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA

Asa WahlstromDivision of Industrial Marketing, e-Commerce and Supply Chain Management, LuleaUniversity of Technology, Lulea, Sweden

Deon NelSenior Lecturer in Marketing in the School of Management and Marketing, DeakinUniversity, Melbourne, Australia

Brand personality has often been considered from the perspective of products, corporatebrands or countries, but rarely among service o erings. Moreover, there remains theconsideration of how these entities are communicated online. This article explores the brandpersonality dimensions that business schools communicate and whether they di er in puttingacross clear and distinctive brand personalities in cyberspace. Three clusters from the Financial Times' top 100 full-time global MBA programs in 2005 are used to undertake a combination of computerisedcontent andcorrespondenceanalyses.Thecontent analysis was structuredusingAaker's ®ve-dimensional framework whilst the positioning maps were produced by examiningthe data using correspondence analysis. Results indicate that some schools have clear brandpersonalities while others fail to communicate their brand personalities in a distinct way. Thisstudy also illustrates a powerful,but simpleandrelatively inexpensive wayfor organisations andbrand researchers to study the brand personalities actually being communicated.

1 Contact author.



Robert Ankomah Opoku, Albert Caruana, Leyland Pitt, Pierre Berthon, Asa Wahlstrom and Deon Nel

Introduction

Marketingscholars haveincreasinglybecomeinterested in understanding andmeasuring the symbolic meaning consumers attribute to brands (e.g. Aaker,1997; Bettman, 1993; Hogg, Cox and Keeling, 2000). This attention has beenmotivated in partby postmodern scholars who have long criticised traditionalexperimental researchers for conceptualising products too narrowly as bun-dles of functional attributes, while failing to consider product symbolism(e.g.Belk, 1988; Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982; Solomon, 1983). In this respectsome scholars interested in brand management have o ered conceptualisa-tions of brands that include symbolic components (e.g., Keller, 2001; Ligas,2000; Park and Srinivasan, 1994). Aaker (1997: 347) who de®ned brandpersonality as `the set of human characteristics associated with a brand' usestraits to develop a psychometrically sound instrument to measure brandpersonality. However, most studies on brand personality communicationhave tended to focus on tangible products and only to a limited extent onservices (e.g. Aaker, 2000; Aaker, Benet-Martinez and Garolera, 2001; Siguaw and Mattila, 1999; Venable, Rose and Gilbert, 2003). A review of the serviceliterature indicates an absence of research that has considered how brandpersonality of universities generally, and business schools in particular, iscommunicated via the promotional tools that they make use of. There is littledoubt that businesseducationisbigbusinessandfor many, includingbusinessschools and their professors, it is a lucrative enterprise (Pfe er and Fong,2002). Business schools and their primary product, full-time MBAs, havebecome extremely popular over the past 50 years. The MBA is recognisedinternationally as theworld's most popular postgraduatedegreeand is seen by many as the passport to a successful management career. In addition, a review of the literature also indicated an absence of studies that have examined thecommunication of brand personalities online. Websites have become animportant channel for entities to reach the public (Maynard and Tian,2004) and represent a medium that also in¯uences the perception of abusiness school program.

The purpose of this study is to draw upon ®ndings of earlier research onbrand personalities in order to describe how business schools communicatebrand personalities in marketing their educational programs online. Inaccordance with previous research (such as Aaker, 1997) which has focused

upon brand personalities acrossbrands, theauthors' focus andcontribution isto extend and contextualise such a study in cyberspace by using the messagecommunicated on a given business school's website as input. Employingcontent and correspondence analyses, this study explores the theories onbrand personalities by investigating if business schools' websites communi-cate these personalities, and if that is the case what messages they convey.Results are reported, conclusions and implications for both theory andmanagement are drawn, limitations are noted and directions for furtherresearch are highlighted.



Online communication of brand personality

Human personality and brand personality

Researchers generally agree that an individual's personality is `the dynamicand organized set of characteristics of a person that uniquely in¯uences his orher cognitions, motivations and behaviors' (Allport, 1961). Ryckman (1997)considered the various personality theories and categorised them into ®veperspectives: psychoanalytic , trait , cognitive , existential and social behaviourist .The trait perspective assumes that personality refers to regularities andconsistencies in an individual's behaviour (Snyder and Ickes, 1985) andincludes the more established BigFive Model.According to this model, nounsand adjectives that describe human personality are integral to the develop-ment and maintenance of social relationships. As such, they become part of the vocabulary used by people every day and are transmitted from onegeneration to another through the process of socialisation. Several studies,scanning thousands of adjectives and nouns in unabridged dictionaries indi erent languages, have been used to identify stable characteristics useful forhuman personality description. According to Caprara, Barbaranelli andGuido (2001), factor analysis conductedon these data sets revealed a structuregenerally composed of only ®ve broad personality dimensions/traits (the so-called BigFive Factors). They are (1) Extroversion (2) Agreeableness (3) Con-scientiousness (4) Emotional Stability and (5) Openness to Experience (forcomplete reviews see Digman, 1997; Goldberg, 1993; McCrae and John, 1992;Wiggins and Pincus, 1992). These identi®ed traits were found to be easily evoked by a limited number of adjectives (so-called markers) that showed ahigh loading in the desired factor and low loadings in the remaining factors(Goldberg, 1993).

Over the years a consensus has emerged among personality psychologiststhat the BigFive Model shouldserve as a referencestructure for theassessmentand description of human personality.However, applicationsof this model tomarketing settings have appeared only in recent years (Aaker, 1995, 1997;Caprara, Barbaranelli and Guido, 1998). Some have argued that the symbolicuse of brands is possible because consumers often imbue brands with humanpersonality traits (termed animism; e.g.Gilmore 1919 as cited in Aaker, 1997 ).Consumerscanreadily think about brandsas if they were celebritiesor famoushistorical ®gures (Rook, 1985). However this may all be due, in part, to thestrategies used by advertisers to imbue a brand with personality traits such as

anthropomorphisation (e.g. California Raisins), personi®cation (e.g. Jolly Green Giant), and the creation of user imagery (e.g. Charlie Girl). Throughsuch techniques the personality traits associated with a brand, such as thoseassociated with an individual, tend to be relatively enduring and distinct.

Aaker (1997: 347) de®nes brand personality as `the set of human char-acteristics associated with a brand.' She notes that previous research hassought to measure brand personality by two types of scales. The ®rst typeconsists of ad hoc scales, that are atheoretical, study speci®c, and with dubiousreliability and validity. There is a second type of scales, i.e. those that aretheoretical, but based on human personality scales that have not beenvalidated in the context of brands (e.g. Bellenger, Steinberg and Stanton,1976; Dolich, 1969). Using established psychometric principles, the authors



put forward a brand personality framework that is generalisable acrossproduct categories, and which consists of ®ve dimensions namely: Sincerity,Excitement, Competence, Sophistication and Ruggedness. There are 15 traitsthat go to make up these ®ve dimensions. Àlthough it could be argued thatthree brand personality dimensions relate to three of the `Big Five' humanpersonality dimensions (i.e. Agreeableness and Sincerityboth capture the ideaof warmth and acceptance; Extroversion and Excitement both connote thenotions of sociability, energy and activity; Conscientiousness and Compet-ence both encapsulate responsibility, dependability and security), two dimen-sions (Sophistication and Ruggedness) di er from any of the Big Five of human personality' (Aaker 1997: 353). In the development of the brandpersonality scale 39 product categories and services were used which includedbrands that serve a symbolic or utilitarian function (e.g. clothes or pain

relievers respectively) or both a symbolic and utilitarian function (e.g.computers) ± see Aaker (1997: 349). The procedures used in the developmentof the brand personality instrument supports the relevance of the conceptua-lisation and measurement of brand personality across di erent products andservices. In addition it has been shown to be relevant across cultures (AakerBenet-Martinez and Garolea, 2001) and among non-pro®t organisations(Venable, Rose and Gilbert, 2003).

Research problem and questionsThe two primary research questions seek to explore and better understand theuse of brand personalities in cyberspace. The subjects of study ± business

schools ± may bene®tdirectly and immediately given society'sburgeoning useof the internet. The investigation begins by asking:

Q1. Are any of the Aaker's ®ve brand personality dimensions used by business schools in their websites' communication?

Kim,Hanand Park (2001) argue that brand personality also helps a website topowerfully di erentiate itself from competing sites, although sites may necessarily besimilar to each other, both in appearance and function.Businessschools can use their websites to di erentiate themselves from others whencommunicating their brand personalities. Hence it is asked:

Q2: In what ways do business schools di er in their use of website

information to communicate brand personalities online?

MethodThe focus is on MBA programs as these are the most popular and sought-after degrees that have become the stamp of approval for managers all overthe world. They also represent big business for universities (O'Reilly, 1994).MBA programs have attracted considerable societal interest and have beenthe focus of numerous rating systems. In selecting the sample, use is madeof the rating system provided by the Financial Times' top 100 full-timeglobal MBA programs. These rankings are extensive and well-established inthe industry. This study makes use of content and correspondence analyses.




To satisfy the data needs of these techniques the authors make use of threepurposeful groupings each of ten cases taken from the top (referred to asCluster 1: ranked 1 to 10), middle (referred to as Cluster 2: ranked 46 to55) and bottom (referred to as Cluster 3: ranked 91 to 100) sections of theFT top 100 MBA list. The rationale for the choice was a desire to produce asample that was at least somewhat strati®ed to represent the proportions of di erent school types in the target populations.

The sources of data were the o cial websites of each of the 30 selectedbusiness schools. In order to broaden the data collection and augment theevaluation of brand personality, units of analysis included not only thehomepage but also the textual information derived from the homepage(initial screen) of each business school's `sub-site' or `sub-portal' and therelevant links connected only to the full-time MBA programs' portal. During

the ®rst week of April 2005, all textual information from the main portal wascopied into a text document. The authors then clicked all links and roots onthe main portal and copied all information available from these documents.All roots or links that were not directly associated with the sub-portal of theselected full-time MBA programs were ignored. This procedure was devel-oped to avoid missing any valuable information concerning each full-timeMBA program websites and hence to obtain all the available information thatotherwise would a ect the results. This systematic procedure generated aconsiderable amount of textual information from each selected website. Theauthors decided not to consider the visual aspects of websites primarily because it would have made the study unmanageable. Moreover, it issuggested that the message conveyed by the wording used on a website islikely to play a most salient role among students interested in a particularuniversity. In addition the aspect of website design and brand personality hasalready been looked at (see Su-e, Dongsung and Jinwoo, 2005).

WordStat was used to conduct the content analysis. This required theconstruction of a set of comprehensive yet appropriate dictionaries, achievedby collecting and compiling synonyms of Aaker's (1997) 42 items that makeup her ®ve brand personality dimensions. This was done with the help of theonline version of Encyclopedia Britannica's thesaurus function and theDictionary Builder software package. To enhance the reliability of the instru-ment, twoparallel lists of synonyms were collected in the same manner by twoindependent academic reviewers. These two lists were merged into one by

selecting only those synonyms that had been identi®ed by both independentreviewers. Finally, a third academic reviewer independently appraised thedraft dictionary and provided further comments and suggestions which wereincorporated. This process enabled the construction of a ®nal list of 1625words that were relatively and evenly distributed across Aaker's original ®vedimensions of brand personality as demonstrated by the following percen-tages: Sincerity 21% of all words listed; Excitement 17%; Competence 20%;Sophistication 21%; and Ruggedness 21% (see Table 1 below for a sample of the compiled dictionary).

In order to ensure the reliability of the content analysis a number of aspectswere considered. First, the authors ensured that the correct URL s of thevariousbusiness schools and their full-time MBAprograms were selected with





Table1: Sample of dictionary of brand personality dimensions and their synonyms

COMPETENCE EXCITEMENT RUGGEDNESS SINCERITY SOPHISTICATION

ableable-bodied

adept

adroit

assiduous

assured

astute

award-winning

blooming

booming

brainy

celebratory

certi®ed

competence

competent

complete

comprehensive

concern

conclusive

con®ned

conglomerate

conquering

conscientious

consistent

constant

craftiness

crafty

cunning

dependable

dexterous

diligence

diligent

doing well

dominantenterprise

entrepreneurial

equipotent

establishment

everlasting

exhaustive

experienced

exultant

failsafe

®rm

®rst-place

¯ourishing

foolproof

for certain

forefront

gainful

genius

get ahead

gifted

glorious

governance

guarantee

guaranteed

hardworking

hard-working

hi-tech

illustrious

imperishable

in front

in charge

industrial

industrialised

activeaggressive

artistic

arty

audacious

audacity

autonomous

avant-garde

awe-inspiring

awesome

bold

boldness

boost

bracing

brand new

brave

bravery

breathtaking

brisk

colorful

colourful

cool

courage

courageous

courant

crazy

creative

creativity

crisp

current

daring

dazzling

designer

determinedearly

electrifying

elevate

emancipate

emancipated

energise

energising

enliven

enlivening

enterprising

exalt

exalting

excitation

excite

excited

excitement

exciting

exhilarate

exhilarating

exuberant

feisty

forceful

fresh

freshness

gutsy

happening

heroic

heroism

high-spirited

hip

al frescoanimal

animals

arduous

beefy

boisterous

brutal

bumpy

callous

challenge

challenging

coarse

confrontation

cowboy

cragged

craggy

crimson

crudeness

crudity

cruel

dangerous

daunting

daybreak

dayspring

demanding

desert

di cult

durable

e ortful

endeavour

endure

external

extinct

extremeferocious

forcible

fresco

freshair

frontier

furrow

godforsaken

granitelike

granitic

grating

gravel

gruelling

hard

hard-boiled

hardened

hard-hitting

harsh

hazardous

heavy-duty

hunt

hunting

huskiness

inhuman

insensitive

irregular

jagged

jeans

jerky

jolting

above boardaccommodating

accurate

actual

a able

approachable

approaching

authentic

bene®cial

benevolent

benign

blunt

bona ®de

bright

buoyant

candid

charitable

cheerful

civil

civilised

civility

clean-cut

clear-cut

common

commonplace

companionable

compassionate

congenial

content

conventional

convivial

co-operative

cordial

correctcourteous

customary

decent

defensible

direct

distinctive

down to earth

earnest

ebullient

emotional

everyday

existent

existing

factual

faithful

forthcoming

forthright

frank

friendly

generous

genial

genuine

glad

good

good-hearted

good-humoured

gracious

gregarious

guileless

hale and hearty

healthful

a la modeaesthetic

alluring

amiable

angelic

appealing

aristocracy

aristocrat

aristocratic

aristocratic

attractive

baronial

beautiful

blue-blooded

brush-up

captivate

captivating

celebrated

charismatic

charm

charming

cherubic

classy

cosmopolitan

cotoure

courtier

cultivated

cultured

cute

dandyish

de luxe

delicate

digni®ed

distinctiondistinguished

dulcet

edi®cation

elegant

eloquent

enchant

enchanting

endearing

engaging

ennobling

enrapture

enthrall

enthralling

enticing

entrancing

epicurean

esteemed

excellent

exclusive

exclusivity

expensive

exquisite

extravagant

eye-catching

fabulous

fascinating

fashionable

female

feminine



the use of the Google , AltaVista and Yahoo search engines. Only links that hadtheir roots in the original URL were extracted for the unit of analysis. Second,the same information about each MBA program was collected as far as it wasprovided, and all data was collected within a one-week period. To ensurereliability, data from each site was collected by two persons and the twodi erent sets of data collected were compared. Third, in constructing thedictionary of search terms all unnecessary and repeated words were carefully weeded out by removing or substituting common su xes, for instance by converting plurals to singulars and reducing adjectives, verbs and adverbs to acommon noun or word stem through the stemming process.

To enhance the validity of the data, two parallel lists of synonyms werecollected in the same manner by two di erent persons. This triangulationmethod was designed to assure comprehensiveness; moreover, two pilot

studies were undertaken using the same dictionary and approach on selectedautomobile manufacturing company websites and on the tourism websites of African countries. The®nal automaticcategorisation dictionary wasthen usedto perform the content analysis of the 30 selected business school websites.This provided the input to the correspondence analysis that followed. Theauthors opted for a two-way dimensional correspondence analysis plot.Researchers tend to agree that a two-way dimensional solution is preferabledue to its ease of display and interpretability (Berthon, Pitt, Berthon,Crowther, Bruwer, Lyall and Money 1997; Hair, Anderson, Tatham andBlack, 1998). All business schools in Cluster 1 are among the major players of the èlite' MBA business schools having consistently occupied the ®rst tenpositions for a number of years. Notable among them have been the ®rst fourschools of the 2005 rankings, located mostly in the north-eastern USA. Thereareonlytwo Europeanschools in thiscluster. InCluster 2 the dominant role of US schools did not change. Apart from three schools which are from theUnited Kingdom, all the schools in this cluster are located in the US. Cluster 3can reasonably be described as the most heterogeneous among the three. Inthis cluster, the United Kingdom and the USA each had four; whilst Franceand Ireland had one school each (see Table 2 below). Although representa-tiveness was not the motivating factor in selecting these cases, it is felt that thesample was fairly representative of the FT 2005 rankings.

AnalysisThe cell counts in the three clusters shown in Table 2 above provide a two-way contingency table of frequencies showing the number of times a particularbrand personality dimension was found to be associated with a particularbusiness school. In termsof individualdimensions, competence was thebrandpersonality dimensionportrayedmost inall theprograms'websites inall threeclusters, whilst Sophistication was the least portrayed. In undertaking thecorrespondence analysis, each cluster and pairs of clusters were ®rst checkedand ®nally we juxtaposed all the 30 cases against each other. When all 30 casesin the dataset are subjected to correspondence analysis, the positioning of theschools in relation to each other, and also against the dimensions of brandpersonality can be plotted. Figure 1 below shows the two-way dimensional





Table 2: Distribution of brand personality dimensions over websites in clusters

BPS Dimension/Name of school Country Competence Excitement Ruggedness Sincerity Sophistication Total

Cluster 1

Harvard Business School USA 597 158 72 177 22 1026

Uni. Of Pennsylvania: Wharton USA 543 197 60 152 27 979

Columbia Business School USA 626 239 18 100 16 999

Stanford University GSB USA 536 183 45 123 21 908

London Business School (LBS) UK 873 194 72 281 38 1458

University of Chicago GSB USA 348 119 16 61 11 555

Dartmouth College: Tuck USA 482 115 31 105 19 752

Insead France 342 156 16 162 25 701

New York University: Stern USA 602 406 18 117 31 1174

Yale School of Management USA 542 225 91 265 12 1135

Row Total 5491 1992 439 1543 222 9687

Cluster 2

Manchester Business School UK 237 75 8 104 15 439

Rice University: Jones USA 686 139 38 281 24 1168

Uni. Of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign USA 238 60 48 68 7 421

Brigham Young University: Marriot USA 316 155 13 125 13 622

Case Western Reserve: Weatherhead USA 360 166 10 99 17 652

Michigan State University: Broad USA 733 494 125 196 32 1580

University of Minnesota: Carson USA 1264 223 45 276 27 1835

Imperial College London: Tanaka UK 521 241 110 66 12 950

Warwick Business School UK 414 187 39 320 35 995

Pennsylvania State: Smeal USA 286 107 17 72 2 484

Total Row 5055 1847 453 1607 184 9146

Cluster 3

University of Durham Business School UK 367 66 9 60 21 523

Pepperdine University: Graziadio USA 738 50 14 82 26 910

Birmingham Business School UK 380 72 18 106 18 594

Edinburgh University Mgt School UK 141 52 21 44 16 274

Uni. Of Washington Business School USA 650 258 15 124 5 1052

Uni. Of Bath School of Management UK 244 119 21 125 24 533

George Washington University USA 277 151 13 29 8 478

Trinity College Dublin Ireland 188 100 22 49 8 367

Fisher USA 160 61 7 22 7 257

ESCP-EAP France 111 18 3 26 6 164

Total Row 3256 947 143 667 139 5152

Note:Forpresentation purposesthe authors have transposed rows andcolumns in this table.In theanalysis, what appearhereas rows

were columns, and vice versa.



correspondence analysis map that is able to explain 83% of the variance in thedata.

Figure 1 above provides a summary map of how the schools are positionedagainst theirpeers andalso on thedimensions of brand personality.Thecirclesare inserted to make the associations clearer. Thus, six of the top ten schools(apart from the schools with rank numbers 3, 6, 9 and 10) are located in theinnermost circle; mostly positioned on competence and sophistication. Thisreinforces the consistency of the messages which the top ten schools portray regarding their brand personalities. NYU (rank #9) positions itself apart fromthe other top ten schools due to its strong association with excitement(perhaps because of its geographic location). The second dotted-circle fromthe centre generally embraces Cluster 2 schools; ®ve of the 10 schools in thiscluster fall within this group. Warwick (rank #54) associates itself withsincerity, and Michigan State (rank #51) and Tanaka (rank #53) with

excitement. Most of the schools in Cluster 3 locate themselves inside thethird dashed-circle from the centre. George Washington University (rank #97) isaligned with excitement whilePepperdine (rank #92) standsapart fromall other schools and all dimensions.

Research question 1Table 3 summarises the results of a dendogram output from the corres-pondence analysis and demonstrate that out of the 30 cases considered, 29schools' websites (97%) identify themselves with one particular brand per-sonality dimensiononly while one (Pepperdine)hasno clear positioning.Fiveschools (Insead ± rank #8, Yale ± rank #10, Manchester ± rank #46, BYU


Figure 1: Correspondence analysis map of all the 30 selected cases of the MBA programs' websites with respect to the Five Personality Dimensions



Marriot ± rank #49 and Bath ± rank #96) identify with ruggedness. Thedendogram establishes that competence and sophistication are related to eachother; likewise sincerity and ruggedness; excitement stands alone ± see Figure2. The bottom part of Table 3 below provides a fair view of each dimension'sfrequency of appearance as a percentage of all communications. This repre-sents the most accurate estimate of dimensional usage. In answer to the ®rstresearch question as to whether any of the ®ve brand personality dimensionsare used by business schools in their website communication, it is concludedthat thewebsitesof sampled schools' do re¯ect thevarietyof brand personality dimensions proposed by Aaker (1997).

Similarity index

Figure 2: The dendogram on all the dimensions.Key: In this diagram, the complete lines and same boxes signify similarity hence strongrelationship whilst dotted lines and di erent boxes indicate weak relationships.

Research question 2Business schools can associate with the same personality trait but thatassociation may not be equally strongly or e ectively communicated. TheFT rankings asshown inTable3 do givean indication of this. For instance, onecould surmise that although Dartmouth (rank #7) and ESCP±EAP (rank #100) similarly identify with competence, Dartmouth is likely to be commu-nicating a stronger brand personality dimension than ESCP-EAP. The samething applies to Wharton (rank #2) and Fisher (rank #99) with regards tosophistication.

The second research question seeks to identify in what ways businessschools di er in their use of website information to communicate brand

personalities online. Clearly, the ®rst basis of communicating a particularpositioning involves the type of words used on their website. For example,words like àctive', `colorful', `current' and `modern' areused to associatewithexcitement while `straight', òpen', àuthentic' and `humane' are used toassociate with the sincerity dimension. A second association of a school with aparticular dimension appeared to be related to how well the school com-municates its curriculum and the instructional delivery system. For example,schools that associate themselves closely with competence mostly rely on onemethodof instructional delivery (e.g. Harvardcase method), whilst those whoportray sophistication as their personality dimension, like Wharton, rely ontwo or more (`multidisciplinaryapproach'; `learning team approach'; `leader-ship development'; èxperiential opportunities').




Table 3: Summary of associations between the 30 cases used and brand personality dimensions

Rank Dimension/Name of school

Competence Sophistication Ruggedness Excitement Sincerity None

Top 10

1 Harvard X

2 Wharton X

3 Columbia X

4 Stanford (X) 1 X

5 LBS X

6 Chicago GSB X

7 Dartmouth X

8 Insead X

9 NYU's Stern X

10 Yale X

Middle 10

46 Manchester X

47 Rice Uni. X

48 Illinois Uni. X

49 BYU Marriot X

50 Weatherhead X

51 Michigan X

52 Carlson X

53 Tanaka X

54 Warwick X

55 Smeal X

Last 10

91 Durham X

92 Pepperdine X

93 Birmingham X

94 Edinburgh X

95 Washington X

96 Bath Uni. X

97 G. Washington X

98 Trinity X

99 Fisher X

100 ESCP-EAP X

Total 10 9 5 4 1 1

Frequency of appearance of dimensions in each case

13802 545 1035 4786 3817

Percentage of frequency showed in the maps

57.5% 2.3% 4.3% 20.0% 15.9%

1 Stanford communicates two brand personality dimensions, Sophistication and Competence, on the correspondenceanalysis map but the dendogram reveals that it was stronger on the former than the latter.



Third, it appears that in general, the more sophisticated a school portraysitself, the higher the fees charged. Websites represent status symbols for theirorganisations (White and Raman, 1999); they are `brand carriers' and anextension of the organisation's operations (Palmer and Gri th, 1998). In thisregard, most of the schools whose websites are strongly associated withcompetence and sophistication are top players in this game. Apart from theirìnnovative curricula', `small class cohorts' and their `global nature', it couldalso beargued that these schools target the èlite'; those who can a ord tuitionand other incidental fees ranging from US$36,000 to $45,000 annually.Fourth, both location and environment appear to have an in¯uence on thechoice of brand personality dimension. For instance, New York University,located in Manhattan, portrays excitement. Overall, it appears that schoolswhich associate themselves with their environment usually adopt either the

excitement or ruggedness dimensions. Finally, control and governance canalso besaid to communicate a desired personality. It can benoted that most of the privately-funded universities rely on competence and sophisticationwhilst their publicly-funded counterparts rely on other brand personality dimensions.

ConclusionsThis research has demonstrated that all®ve brand personality dimensions putforward by Aaker (1997) could be identi®ed in the online communications of selected business schools. Indeed, the®ndings here are consistent with Aaker'sbelief that these ®ve dimensions can be applied across all product categories.The authors have established that MBA programs utilise their websites invarious ways and to varying degrees to associate themselves with a particulardimension and hence, to di erentiate themselves from other schools. Thisa rms the assertion made by Perry and Bodkin (2002) that being able to use acomprehensive and integratedmarketingcommunicationswebsite strategy todi erentiate one ®rm from its competitors will become a necessity as moreand more organisations use websites in trying to foster relationships withcustomers. The ®ndings also show that some schools appear to succeed betterthan others in creating strong brand personalities for themselves by clear anddistinct positioning. The authorsconclude that the Cluster 1 schoolsgenerally communicate stronger brand personalities on their websites than their

counterparts in the middle and bottom clusters. Cluster 1 schools arecomparatively old, basically private-oriented and have distinguished them-selves in this industry. The marketing situation of the middle-ten in Cluster 2is relatively more favourable than that of Cluster 3. This is not overly surprising because the last ten schools in Cluster 3, are in most part composedof `newcomers' to, or `fallers' from the top 100 league; hence, it will likely takethem time to build a strong and consistent brand personality.

Theauthorsascertained thatbusiness schools di er in how the informationon their websites communicates brand personality. Di erent schools choos-ing the same brand personality may select di erent words for their messages,which may a ect the strength of the message and associations with otherpersonality dimensions. For example, NYU promotes Excitement, but also




Sophistication because it highlights the many multicultural events that New York has to o er. It was also observed that certain types of brand personality appear to be a re¯ection of the type of curriculum o ered, the mode of instructional delivery, and the tuition fees charged. Some factors that wereconsidered by some schools include:

Location and environment (whether the school is situated close to or in abig city, commercial centre, recreational/sports centre, etc.).Control and governance (whether the school is privately- or publicly-funded).Philosophical orientation of the school (quality, worldview, religious).

Methodologically, there are many di erent views on thevalue of qualitativeanalysis in a study such as this. Problems that are cited include the volume of data and the perceived complexity of analysis (Pettigrew, 1990; Richards andRichards, 1987). On the contrary, this study has brought to light how such atask can be managed by using simple collection and analytical tools thatappreciably simplify and reduce the duration of time required to perform theessential tasks. This study supports the value of the multi-strategy (combina-tion of qualitative andquantitative) approach to research (e.g. Sinkovics, Penzand Ghauri, 2005) and, hence, advocates for a less dichotomous paradigmaticview. Other researchers have complained about the èxtremely time-consuming and confusing nature' of evaluating entire websites (Okazaki,2005). However, this study shows that this need not be the case when theinvestigators arm themselves with the appropriate data collection and analyt-ical tools. The authors evaluated all thirty websites within one week. It is

essential to take the time to ®nd, develop and/or validate tools in conjunctionwith having a methodologically-sound study framework.

Limitations of the studyLimitations in interpreting theoutcomesof this present study shouldbenotedwhilst other caveats should be borne in mind in generalising the results of thisstudy. First, only full-time MBA programs with 100 schools in the FT rankinglist make up the sampling space, of which only 30 full-time MBA programswere covered in this study. The primary focus was to determine whetherbusiness schools' websites communicate Aaker's brand personality dimen-

sions, which ones they promote and how. The authors never sought togeneralise to all business schools and relied instead on value judgments inclustering these schools into three. Notwithstanding, it is believed thatsampling method used in this instance was reasonable and not a majorweakness of this study. Second, the somewhat controversial nature of usingcontent analysis software as an analytical tool in the current context isrecognised here. However, the authors believe that a fastidious approachwas taken when developing this dictionary, drawing from the expertise of several independent reviewers using several independent sources. Third, theinvestigators tried to interpret all data fromthequantitativepoint of view, butmost of the analyses of the maps were somewhat in¯uenced by value judgments. In addition, the authors recognise that relying on a two-dimen-




sional plot may berisky as it is rare to see sucha plot telling a complete or evenan accurate story. Fourthly, since, in this study, only text information wasanalysed, it is possible that the entire brand image may not be fully examined.This could have an impact on the portrayed brand personalities of theseinvestigated websites. Moreover, the authors do not claim in any way toprovide insight into how customers of these schools perceive the full-timeMBA programs, but just into how these schools use their websites to com-municate brand personalities. Finally, studies of this nature and othersrelating to the internet are often regarded as historic within some months.

Implications for theoryAs an extension of theories on brand personalities, this study has provided a

holistic perspective on how business schools communicate brand per-sonalities online in a clear and distinct manner. It also has helped to assesswhether the change in the context could have had an e ect on Aaker's (1997)brand personality dimensions. Additionally, it has revealed whether businessschools consciously or subconsciouslycommunicate theirbrandpersonalitiesonline. This study has also o ered a description of the phenomenon of brandcommunication in a very speci®c setting (the online environment) and ispresumed to serve as a basis for further research. Past research providedtheories upon which the research purpose was formulated. Hopefully, theresults of this study will serve as a foundation for future investigations. Thecontribution to theory again is based on the online situation. This can beadded to what has been examined and described by previous research so as toform the basis for further research on brand communication in the onlineenvironment. The authors believe that this study may serve as a springboardfor future researchers/investigators interested in exploring the online phe-nomenon further. These conclusions could form the basis for future hypo-theses.

Implications for management and practitionersIn spiteof the limitations that have been noted, this study clearly demonstrateswhy it is becoming increasingly important for business schools to betterunderstand the concepts of brand personality and brand personality com-

munication online. This is a time in which business education (and especially MBA education) have become huge and in which the competition to securethe best students is becoming increasingly acute. As the web increasingly becomes an important medium to reach a target audience, program/brandmanagers and administrators must begin to monitor the competition and todevise new strategies in order to create unique brand personalities. This study can be an eye-opener for business schools as regards the need for them totarget their online audience by exhibiting identi®able and memorable mes-sages about brand personality dimensions/traits so as to reap the bestoutcomes from online communication. A well-established brand personality is thought to heighten emotional ties with the brand, increase preference andpatronage, and augment a sense of trust and loyalty (Sigauw, Matilla and




Austin, 1999). To program managers and administrators, this study thereforesheds light on the signi®cance of regular website updates to continuously monitor and upgrade the brand personality they intend to convey. By thisprocess, managers canmaintain oldcustomersand attract newones. Also, thisstudy has brought to the fore the need to further develop the idea of brandpositioning management strategies by business schools in the online environ-ment and o ers helpful general guidelines for business schools when they areembarking on the development of a website or otherwise want to communi-cate their brand.

Finally, the role of this study has been to introduce and demonstrate thedual combination of content and correspondence analyses in assessing thebrand personalities of websites. The correspondence analysis as exempli®edhere empowers website managers to visualise the brand personality of their

organisations' websites relative to their competitors, as well as relative tobenchmarks at a very low cost. In today's ®ercely competitive businessenvironment, this combination of techniques a ordsorganisations the ability to assess how their brand is positioned online, and how they are mirroringthemselves in the minds of their customers and stakeholders. This proposedmethod permits data collection that is also visual and requires a fraction of thetime that otherwise is required by other methods and at a much lower cost.

Further research directionsThe study and techniques described in this study provide a number of futureopportunities for researchers, school administrators, brand managers, pro-

gram coordinatorsandotherswith an interest in thearea. At thesimplest level,it would be possible to include more samples in order to improve thegeneralisation of the results contained herein. A research area that meritsexploration is to investigate into at least ®ve or more carefully selected schoolsfromeach continentor region. This could help to cross-fertiliseandenrich theresults. Further study that is warranted is to re-investigate only the schoolswhich occupy the same positions in the 2006 as the 2005 rankings. This wouldhelp to identify precipitants of change. Website communication is one of many integrated marketing communication tools. Therefore, website com-munication could be compared with other communication media such asbrochures, press reports and releases, annual reports, and broadcast and printadvertising in order to determine the extent to which educational marketerscommunicate consistent brand personality messages across all media. Then,these relationships could be compared with stakeholder-based perceptions of brand personality. Subsequently, the techniques described here can aid long-itudinal research, so that the e ect of online brand communication on othervariables, such as press coverage, and of course customer perceptions, can betracked over time and conclusions drawn accordingly.

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Robert Opoku PhD is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Department of Managementand Marketing, College of Industrial Management, King Fahd University of Petroleum andMinerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. His primary research interests lie in online brand manage-ment, online destination marketing, and e-commerce in developingcountries.He has publishedin journals such as Tourism Management , Journal of African Business, Journal of Brand Management,Qualitative Market Research, Journal of Marketing for Higher Educationand Journal of Financial Services Marketing amongst others.

Albert Caruana PhD is Professor of Marketing at the University of Malta, Malta and VisitingProfessorat theUniversity ofBologna, Italy. His research interests focusprimarilyon marketingcommunicationsand services marketing. Dr Caruana has undertakenpostdoctoral research asFulbright Fellow in the US during 2004, as Commonwealth Research Scholar in 2000 and hasbeen on various research fellowships in Australia. His work includes papers in the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Managementand European Journal of Marketing. Dr Caruana has also pursued numerous teaching invitations in various countries.

Leyland Pitt holds positionsas Professorof Marketing in theSegal Graduate Schoolof Business,Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada and as Senior research fellow, Leeds UniversityBusiness School, UK.He haspublished in journals such as Information Systems Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, California Management Review Sloan Management Review and MSQuarterly , where he also served as Associate Editor.

Pierre Berthon PhD holds the Cli ord F Youse Chair of Marketing and Strategy at Bentley




University. Professor Berthon has held academic positions at Columbia University in the US,Henley Management College, Cardi University and University of Bath in the UK. He has also

taught or held visiting positions at Rotterdam School of Management, Copenhagen BusinessSchool, Norwegian School of Economics and Management, Cape Town Business School,University of Cape Town and Athens Laboratory of Business Administration. His researchfocuses on the interaction of technology, corporate strategy and consumer behaviour, and hasappeared in journals such as Sloan Management Review , California Management Review , Informa-tion Systems Research, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Journal of International Marketing , Long RangePlanning , Business Horizons, European Management Journal , Journal of Interactive Marketing , Journal of Information Technology , Information Systems Review , Journal of Business Ethics, Marketing Theory and others.

Asa Wahlstrom is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Industrial Marketing, e-Commerceand SupplyChain Management at Lulea University of Technology, Lulea, Sweden. Her researchinterests are in the areas of industrial buying behavior and e-commerce, and she teachesindustrial marketing, and services marketing. Her work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Corporate Ownership and Control .

Deon Nel PhD is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing at Deakin University,Melbourne, Australia.He teaches marketingstrategy on undergraduate and graduate programsthere.His work has been published in journals such as the European Journal of Marketing , Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Information Technology and the Journal of General Management. His research interests lie in the areas of services marketing ande-commerce.




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