Hello,

I am working on brand personality (BP) topic in tourism and hotel marketing field. However I have a serious question related to the scales that measure BP…

Aaker (1997) developed BP Scale, as known well. However, some authors have criticized her scale due to the personality traits she used in her scale (although BP is a metaphoric concept). For example, Azoulay and Kapferer (2003) and Geuens et al. (2009) discussed that BP scales must only include the human personality traits. Aaker used some items that reflects the user imagery, identity or image of the brand like “feminine, sophisticated, competent” et al… which are not human personality traits at all. Thus, those authors claim that Aaker’s scale is not applicable for measuring BP, because it measures Brand Identity, Brand Image and BP partly. So, we can think that BP scale of Aaker is not strict for BP measures. But many writers have studied BP based on Aaker’s scale, and this comprehension seems to continue.

So the question is here: “who is right?”

Do we have to measure BP by using Human Personality traits strictly? Or is it possible to add items that reflect the brand like Aaker did on her scale?