The Impact of Brand Personality and Students’ Self-Concept on Brand Engagement

The objective of this study is to investigate how brand personality and customers self affects brand engagement. This has become necessary because the focus of most research into brands has often neglected how brand personality and customers’ ‘self’ can be harnessed to achieve brand engagement. This study used Aaker’s brand personality, Keller’s brand engagement, and Sprott et. al. self-concept measurement scales. The research methodology includes the following steps: adaptation of the measurement scales to suit the research context, assessment of reliability and validity of dimensions, and test of goodness-of-fit of model. In all 252 valid responses out of 302 questionnaires distributed were used for the study. The research found that brand personality and customers’ ‘self-concept’ have positive effect on brand engagement. Sincerity has negative relationship with brand engagement and self-concept whiles hedonism has negative relationship with self-concept only. Competence, sophistication and excitement dimensions have significant effects on customers’ self-concept and brand engagement. Sincerity and hedonism also have negative effects on self-concept and brand engagement. Competence, sophistication and excitement can be used as differentiate strategy by Private Universities to deal with the growing competition in Ghana. The findings suggest that Private Universities can differentiate themselves by developing brand personality that is competent and exciting, whereby they can successfully engaged their customers. The authors’ investigations also suggest that self-concept can be measured by splitting Sprott et al measurement scale into two (self-congruence and value-congruence). In the same way, brand engagement can be measured by splitting Keller’s measurement scale into two (identification and ambassador dimensions) for theoretical insight. In addition, hedonism has been identified as a useful measure of brand personality but not clear with faith-based Private Universities’ brand personality. Private Universities’ differentiation strategy should be based on competence, sophistication and excitement.