Country brand personality of Brazil: a hindsight of Aaker’s theory

The purpose of this paper is to apply a brand personality model into a country level, by adjusting Aaker’s classical dimensions (J Mark Res 34(3):347–356, 1997) while methodologically aligning into a country image in lenses of a country branding perspective. Using Brazil as a unit of analysis, fourteen international experts were in-depth and individual face-to-face interviewed for this exploratory research. By doing so, a country brand personality (CBP) framework is composed of five dimensions: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and malignancy. For instance, the core aspects of four positive dimensions (sincerity, excitement, sophistication, and competence) attract tourists, professionals, business, and investments—by adding value to the country brand. In contrast, the negative aspects defined as the malignancy dimension subtract value to the country brand. Overall, the results indicate that the top dimensions are excitement and sincerity followed by more favourable associations with Brazil than ones. By fine-tuning Aaker’s (1997) brand personality dimensions into a country image setting, this study contributes to the state-of-art through the hindsight on the theoretical linkage between brand personality and CBP. While brand personality studies are well documented in the marketing literature, application of branding theories to place brands—to a country brand—is relatively new.