An Application of Brand Personality to Green Consumers: A Thematic Analysis

Green marketing is one of the major movements in modern businesses in India (Pujari & Wright, 1996). It is defined as the process of analyzing and gratifying the requirements of customers and society in a beneficial and sustainable way (Peattie, 1995). Customers' awareness about and government regulations regarding environment issues has increased the demand for eco-friendly products (Krause, 1993; Polonsky & Ottman, 1998). Environmental groups are now monitoring firms' compliance with ecological principles, creating awareness and increased pressure in the business environment (Mendleson & Polonsky, 1995). Green marketing is directed towards reducing the negative environmental force of production and consumption (Polonsky, 2005). It seeks to balance the techno economic market perception with a broader socio environmental approach (Peattie, 1999). In research relating to consumer behavior, a considerable amount of attention has been given to the construct brand personality, which refers to the set of human characteristics related with a brand (Aaker, 1997). Researchers have focused on the usage of brand by the consumers to express their self (Belk, 1988). Brand is viewed as a key way to differentiate a product from that of the competitors (Halliday, 1996). However, despite this significance, research on brand personality and the symbolic use of brands is limited due to the lack of acquiescence regarding what brand personality really is (Aaker, 1997). Scholars have opined that with the help of distinctive brand personality, the brand equity can be enhanced in consumer memory by creating a set of unique and favorable associations (Keller, 1993). Also, it has been observed that a well-established brand personality influences consumer preferences and patronage and it also helps in developing trust and loyalty towards the brand (Fournier, 1988; Malhotra, 1988). Although, there are studies concerning the purchase behavior for ecological products by the consumer (Mostafa, 2007), the dimensions of green brand personality have not been investigated (Ekinci et al., 2013). Aaker (1997) proposed five brand personality dimensions namely, competence, sincerity, excitement, sophistication, and ruggedness and opined that these may differ from brand to brand and from context to context. For example, Siguaw et al. (1999) did a study using different restaurant brands in the USA found that the personality profiles were different for upscale, quick service, and casual dining restaurants. In quick service restaurant, sincerity and sophistication were more prominent whereas, in casual dining, ruggedness was more prominent. It shows that differences in the degree of dimensions proposed by Aaker (1997) are due to the contextual nature of brand personality. Therefore, there is a compelling need to explore these dimensions in the case of green brands. Thus, it is important to address the paucity of exploratory research on green brand personality in India by applying Aaker's (1997) conceptualization of brand personality (refer Appendix 1). More specifically, since brand personality is contextual in nature, this study aims to answer whether a green brand in the present context retains the personality dimensions outlined by Aaker (1997) and, could there be any other underlying dimension of green personality? The rest of the article espouses the following structure: The first section defines and presents a summary of the past literature on green brand and other related terms. The second section is "methodology" which describes how the data were collected and who were the informants. The third section is "data analysis" which involves thematic analysis of the data collected. The forth section is "discussion" wherein, theoretical contribution, limitations and future research have been discussed. Literature Review Green Brand/Green Marketing In previous studies, questions were raised as to why firms should respond to environmental regulations (McGee, 1998). …