Brand personality and its outcomes in the Chinese automobile industry

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between brand personality' and key outcomes in the Chinese automobile industry. A secondary aim of the study is to look at whether or not these relationships hold across purchasers and non-purchasers. The major conclusion is that while brand personality dimensions are somewhat consistent across both purchasers and non-purchasers, the brand personality outcomes differ somewhat between the groups. First, brand personality plays a critical role in improving perceived quality and creating brand trust, a key finding given the intensely competitive nature of the Chinese automobile industry. Second, perceived quality plays an important role in mediating the relationship between brand personality and brand commitment for both groups. Third, perceived quality does not affect brand trust for the purchaser group. In the context of Chinese automobile industry, increasing the level of perceived quality of a particular brand requires convincing non-purchasers that the brand is valuable, and that the information being provided is useful. Fourth, since the relationship between perceived quality and brand trust was found to be non-significant, future research studies may wish to focus on obtaining a better understanding of Chinese cultural perspectives to shed further light on why perceived quality and brand trust are not related for the automobile purchaser group.