Scientometric Analysis of Brand Personality

Abstract

The main focus of brand personality is the emotional bond that the consumer establishes with the product or service on offer and the strategies that are developed to strengthen such bond. This concept has received increasing attention and both its study and its applications have escaped the field where it initially originated: marketing. Despite the above, no studies have been carried out that analyze the scientific production trends associated with it. This prevents us from knowing what state of scientific development the concept is in and how you project its lines of development, both at the research and applied levels. The aim of this paper is a presentation of the literature on the subject of brand personality using a scientometric analysis based on the Web of Science database. The main results reveal that 531 papers were identified in the period between 1975 and 2019, with an exponential growth in terms of production and a constant growth in terms of number of quotations, with Aaker being the most cited author and Davies the most productive. An analysis was also carried out on the co-authorship clusters for scientific production, the institutions of affiliation, and the countries where the authors come from, as well as the main journals where this scientific production is disseminated. The conclusion is that brand personality has taken off in the past few decades in different areas of knowledge allowing to go beyond the marketing perspective in order to encompass the production of knowledge in different disciplines such as business, psychology, services, communication, education, and social sciences in general.

1. Introduction

Generally speaking, brand personality is a concept associated with marketing and is understood as the set of human characteristics or traits associated with a brand [1,2]. Authors such as Saravanan [3] have established the relationship between brand personality and consumer personality, while Hou et al. [4] highlighted the emotional connection that is generated between the consumer and the brand, based on the personality of the brand. These authors gave brand personality a symbolic value in the minds of consumers that explains their identification with the brand, their behaviour in relation to its products and/or services, and their loyalty [5,6].

Notwithstanding the above, brand personality is not limited to the firm’s relationship with customers but encompasses and/or has effects on other areas of the firm itself. For instance, several authors have stated that branding is a value signal which impacts on the firm’s growth and profitability [7,8,9]. Moreover, Keller and Richey [10] pointed out that brand personality reflects employees’ values and actions, highlighting brand management at company level. In addition, brand personality has also been studied in terms of corporate social responsibility, mainly with the aim of identifying communication attributes that consumers perceive as characteristics of a socially responsible brand personality [11,12,13,14,15,16]. This paper also identified studies that explore how firms can adapt their offer in order to build brands that are perceived as generating experiences (rather than simply delivering products and/or services) and personality [17,18].

In addition, brand personality has gone beyond the scope of traditional business and can be applied to all types of organisations, both profit and non-profit, such as townhalls [19], political parties [20,21]; pension systems [22]; fire brigades [23], higher education [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31], perception of services provided by robots [32,33], to name a few.

Furthermore, besides its impact on different areas and types of organisations, brand personality has also entered into the new contexts in which such organisations are operating. One emerging area of development is brand personality in the digital context [34]. This component analyses how social media and new forms of communication and product acquisition relate to brand personality, as well as the role that social media referents (e.g., influencers) play in how consumers identify with social media. This is rather relevant, considering that society’s sources of meaning are no longer just family or work, but are instead open to globalised and easily accessible content.

The above shows that brand personality is a theoretical construct with a practical use that goes beyond the marketing sphere, increasingly encompassing different areas within an organisation and different types of organisations and addressing the new contexts in which they are involved. Despite the obvious importance that this concept has acquired, only the study by Llanos-Herrera and Merigo [35] has analysed its scientific development from a bibliometric point of view. Previous work limited to a descriptive analysis, particularly with regard to the lack of dynamic analysis of the scientific production developed from the concept. Thus, information is available on the state of scientific production on brand personality (in descriptive terms), but nothing is known about its evolution and trends over time. In this sense, a knowledge gap is detected regarding the way in which the study of the concept of brand personality has evolved over time.

Taking this into consideration, the aim of this study is to analyse both descriptively and dynamically the scientific development of the concept of brand personality, in order to identify trends in terms of the number of published papers; most cited and productive authors, also considering authorship clusters; and most productive institutions, countries, and scientific journals on the subject. This will allow to understand how the study of brand personality has evolved and to plan future lines of research. This is particularly relevant considering that the theoretical development of the concept, together with the empirical evidence gathered on it, have a direct impact on different spheres and different types of organisations in the current environment.

2. Materials and Methods

This study is a scientometric analysis based on a search of scientific papers in Web of Science (WoS) and its Science Citation Index (SCI-E) indicators. WoS is a multidisciplinary database covering most of the important international journals in the field of pure, applied, and medical sciences [36]. In addition, the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) were also considered.

Bibliometric and/or scientometric analysis has been widely used by various authors as a way to simplify global trends in the area of marketing such as neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience [37,38] electronic services and the quality of electronic services [39], electronic marketing [40], online learning [41], mobile healthcare [42], neuromarketing and EEG [43], among several other topics, since this type of study allows the academic or professional to understand the current position of the theory and practices of electronic management for its dynamic use. A systematic bibliometric analysis can serve to provide a holistic view of the trend of publications and their trajectory in terms of various topics [44].

The analysis was carried out by applying the laws of bibliometrics to the analysis of citations and links and by measuring author productivity [45]. Structural aspects within the scientific community are also discussed, such as publishing collaboration and co-authorship (which makes it possible to detect the level of cooperation between countries, organisations and/or authors); common references, co-referencing or bibliographic coupling (by correlating authors or scientific groups); and common keywords or co-words (by identifying whether authors or scientific papers belong to a specific area of knowledge).

The search vector applied was based on keywords, logical conjunction connectors, and closeness constraints [46] on papers indexed between 1975 and 2019 in SCI-E, SSCI-as sources of certified knowledge [47], A&HCI and ESCI. From 2015 to 2018, the Citation Index has added more than 7500 new journals from different countries to its database [48]. To this end, the concept Brand Personality has been analysed in all languages, resulting in 531 papers.

The following bibliometric indicators were used for the analysis: papers, citations, journals, institutions, authors, and countries, in addition to an analysis of the bibliometric map on brand personality. A detailed map of key concepts was therefore designed based on frequency data and their respective clusters. The results were studied through a social network analysis based on graph theory using the VOSviewer software version 1.6.15.

The WoS database search, updated as of 22 May 2020, was as follows:

(TS = ((“Brand Personality”)) AND DOCUMENT TYPES: (Paper) Indexes = SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, ESCI Timespan = All years.

3. Results

3.1. Papers and Citations in the Study Area

After searching for papers on “Brand Personality” published between 1975 and 2019, 531 papers were identified between 1995 and 2019, the first one by Aaker and Fournier [49]. This implies that papers related to this concept written before this date were not published in WoS indexed journals. Of the published papers, there were 15,239 citations as a whole, with a linear growth of ART(YEAR) = 3.1734(YEAR)-6347.8 with an R² = 77.13%. This means that the production of knowledge is accelerating exponentially, confirming the existence of a critical mass in this area of study (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 shows a steady growth until 2013; in 2014 there is a small decline, which is overshadowed by a strong increase in 2015, before declining again until 2017 and then picking up again up to 2019.

Figure 2 shows the number of citations per year in the literature on brand personality. As opposed to the number of publications, the number of citations does not show any inflection points (the growth has been steady). Between 1995 and 2005 citations per year were fewer than 100, between 2006 and 2013 they were over 100 but fewer than 1000, between 2014 and 2017 over 1000 but fewer than 2000, and it was in 2019 when they reached their peak with 2674 citations.

In terms of paper citation rate (

Table 1. General citation structure. Source: Compiled by the authors based on Clarivate Web of Science.

No. of Citations	No. of Papers	% of Papers
≥500 citations	3	0.56%
≥250 citations	5	0.94%
≥100 citations	19	3.58%
≥50 citations	35	6.59%
<1 citations	373	70.24%
0 citations	96	18.08%
Total	531	100.00%

) 15,239 citations in this subject were counted. 96 papers have not been cited (18% of the total), 373 papers have fewer than 50 citations in WoS (70.24% of the studies performed), 59 papers have more than 50 and fewer than 500 citations (11.11% of the studies performed), and only three papers have more than 500 citations (0.56% of the studies performed).

As for the top papers, out of the 531 declared by WoS (2020), their Hirsch index or h-Index was considered as a criterion [50]. As a general rule, the index favours established authors who publish a steady stream of papers with a lasting and above-average impact. Of the papers found, 57 have more than 57 citations and are therefore the publications with the highest impact in the group under study (see

Table 2. Most cited papers within the scientific productions. Source: Compiled by the authors based on Clarivate Web of Science.

R	Author	Year	Title	Journal	TC
1	Aaker, JL	1997	Dimensions of brand personality	Journal of Marketing Research	2209
2	Brakus, J. Josko; Schmitt, Bernd H.; Zarantonello, Lia	2009	Brand Experience: What Is It? How Is It Measured? Does It Affect Loyalty?	Journal of Marketing	1073
3	Aaker, J; Fournier, S; Brasel, SA	2004	When good brands do bad	Journal of Consumer Research	578
4	Aaker, JL; Benet-Martinez, V; Garolera, J	2001	Consumption symbols as carriers of culture: A study of Japanese and Spanish brand personality constructs	Journal of Personality and Social Psychology	398
5	Malaer, Lucia; Krohmer, Harley; Hoyer, Wayne D.; Nyffenegger, Bettina	2011	Emotional Brand Attachment and Brand Personality: The Relative Importance of the Actual and the Ideal Self	Journal of Marketing	369
6	Kressmann, Frank; Sirgy, M. Joseph; Herrmann, Andreas; Huber, Frank; Huber, Stephanie; Lee, Dong-Jin	2006	Direct and indirect effects of self-image congruence on brand loyalty	Journal of Business Research	327
7	Hosany, S; Ekinci, Y; Uysal, M	2006	Destination image and destination personality: An application of branding theories to tourism places	Journal of Business Research	318
8	Lievens, F; Highhouse, S	2003	The relation of instrumental and symbolic attributes to a company’s attractiveness as an employer	Personnel Psychology	283
9	Orth, Ulrich R.; Malkewitz, Keven	2008	Holistic package design and consumer brand impressions	Journal of Marketing	246
10	Geuens, Maggie; Weijters, Bert; De Wulf, Kristof	2009	A new measure of brand personality	International Journal of Research in Marketing	204
11	Chen, Ching-Fu; Phou, Sambath	2013	A closer look at destination: Image, personality, relationship and loyalty	Tourism Management	184
12	Usakli, Ahmet; Baloglu, Seyhmus	2011	Brand personality of tourist destinations: An application of self-congruity theory	Tourism Management	184
13	Caprara, GV; Barbaranelli, C; Guido, G	2001	Brand personality: How to make the metaphor fit?	Journal of Economic Psychology	181
14	Sung, YJ; Tinkham, SF	2005	Brand personality structures in the United States and Korea: Common and culture-specific factors	Journal of Consumer Psychology	168
15	Swaminathan, Vanitha; Stilley, Karen M.; Ahluwalia, Rohini	2009	When Brand Personality Matters: The Moderating Role of Attachment Styles	Journal of Consumer Research	166
16	Kim, CK; Han, D; Park, SB	2001	The effect of brand personality and brand identification on brand loyalty: Applying the theory of social identification	Japanese Psychological Research	164
17	Schmitt, Bernd	2012	The consumer psychology of brands	Journal of Consumer Psychology	155
18	Labrecque, Lauren I.; Milne, George R.	2012	Exciting red and competent blue: the importance of color in marketing	Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science	152
19	Venable, BT; Rose, GM; Bush, VD; Gilbert, FW	2005	The role of brand personality in charitable giving: An assessment and validation	Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science	147
20	Sung, Yongjun; Kim, Jooyoung	2010	Effects of Brand Personality on Brand Trust and Brand Affect	Psychology & Marketing	139
21	Grohmann, Bianca	2009	Gender Dimensions of Brand Personality	Journal of Marketing Research	138
22	Aaker, J; Fournier, S	1995	Brand as a character, a partner and a person: Three perspectives on the question of brand personality	Advances in Consumer Research, vol xxii	124
23	Chartrand, TL	2005	The role of conscious awareness in consumer behavior	Journal of Consumer Psychology	117
24	Merrilees, Bill; Miller, Dale; Herington, Carmel	2009	Antecedents of residents’ city brand attitudes	Journal of Business Research	113
25	Helgeson, JG; Supphellen, M	2004	A conceptual and measurement comparison of self-congruity and brand personality-The impact of socially desirable responding	International journal of Market research	113
26	Fournier, Susan; Alvarez, Claudio	2012	Brands as relationship partners: Warmth, competence, and in-between	Journal of consumer Psychology	102
27	Bian, Xuemei; Moutinho, Luiz	2011	The role of brand image, product involvement, and knowledge in explaining consumer purchase behaviour of counterfeits Direct and indirect effects	European journal of Marketing	101
28	Stern, BB	2006	What does brand mean? Historical-analysis method and construct definition	journal of the academy of marketing science	99
29	Liu, Fang; Li, Jianyao; Mizerski, Dick; Soh, Huangting	2012	Self-congruity, brand attitude, and brand loyalty: a study on luxury brands	european journal of marketing	98
30	Lievens, F; Van Hoye, G; Schreurs, B	2005	Examining the relationship between employer knowledge dimensions and organizational attractiveness: An application in a military context	journal of occupational and organizational psychology	96
31	Sung, Minjung; Yang, Sung-Un	2008	Toward the Model of University Image: The Influence of Brand Personality, External Prestige, and Reputation	journal of public relations research	95
32	Delbaere, Marjorie; McQuarrie, Edward F.; Phillips, Barbara J.	2011	PERSONIFICATION IN ADVERTISING Using a Visual Metaphor to Trigger Anthropomorphism	journal of advertising	93
33	Johar, GV; Sengupta, J; Aaker, JL	2005	Two roads to updating brand personality impressions: Trait versus evaluative inferencing	journal of marketing research	91
34	Sirianni, Nancy J.; Bitner, Mary Jo; Brown, Stephen W.; Mandel, Naomi	2013	Branded Service Encounters: Strategically Aligning Employee Behavior with the Brand Positioning	journal of marketing	90
35	Bosnjak, Michael; Bochmann, Valerie	2007	Dimensions of brand personality attributions: A person-centric approach in the German cultural context	social behavior and personality	89
36	Ang, Swee Hoon; Lim, Elison Ai Ching	2006	The influence of metaphors and product type on brand personality perceptions and attitudes	journal of advertising	87
37	Smit, Edith; Bronner, Fred; Tolboom, Maarten	2007	Brand relationship quality and its value for personal contact	journal of business research	86
38	Wang, Xuehua; Yang, Zhilin	2008	Does country-of-origin matter in the relationship between brand personality and purchase intention in emerging economies? Evidence from China’s auto industry	international marketing review	84
39	Diamantopoulos, Adamantios; Smith, Gareth; Grime, Ian	2005	The impact of brand extensions on brand personality: experimental evidence	european journal of marketing	77
40	Davies, Gary	2008	Employer branding and its influence on managers	european journal of marketing	76
41	Lee, Yong-Ki; Back, Ki-Joon; Kim, Jin-Young	2009	Family restaurant brand personality and its impact on customer’s emotion, satisfaction, and brand loyalty	journal of hospitality & tourism research	74
42	Freling, Traci H.; Crosno, Jody L.; Henard, David H.	2011	Brand personality appeal: conceptualization and empirical validation	journal of the academy of marketing science	73
43	Bian, Xuemei; Moutinho, Luiz	2009	An investigation of determinants of counterfeit purchase consideration	Journal of business Research	73
44	Orth, Ulrich R.; Limon, Yonca; Rose, Gregory	2010	Store-evoked affect, personalities, and consumer emotional attachments to brands	Journal of Business Research	72
45	Sweeney, Jillian C.; Brandon, Carol	2006	Brand personality: Exploring the potential to move from factor analytical to circumplex models	psychology & marketing	72
46	Yorkston, Eric A.; Nunes, Joseph C.; Matta, Shashi	2010	The Malleable Brand: The Role of Implicit Theories in Evaluating Brand Extensions	journal of marketing	71
47	Batra, Rajeev; Lenk, Peter; Wedel, Michel	2010	Brand Extension Strategy Planning: Empirical Estimation of Brand-Category Personality Fit and Atypicality	journal of marketing research	70
48	Pitt, Leyland F.; Opoku, Robert; Hultman, Magnus; Abratt, Russell; Spyropoulou, Stavroula	2007	What I say about myself: Communication of brand personality by African countries	tourism management	70
49	Aguirre-Rodriguez, Alexandra; Bosnjak, Michael; Sirgy, M. Joseph	2012	Moderators of the self-congruity effect on consumer decision-making: A meta-analysis	journal of business research	69
50	Valette-Florence, Pierre; Guizani, Haythem; Merunka, Dwight	2011	The impact of brand personality and sales promotions on brand equity	journal of business research	68
51	Chien, P. Monica; Cornwell, T. Bettina; Pappu, Ravi	2011	Sponsorship portfolio as a brand-image creation strategy	journal of business research	65
52	Kaplan, Melike Demirbag; Yurt, Oznur; Guneri, Burcu; Kurtulus, Kemal	2010	Branding places: applying brand personality concept to cities	european journal of marketing	65
53	Lim, Elison Ai Ching; Ang, Swee Hoon	2008	Hedonic vs. utilitarian consumption: A cross-cultural perspective based on cultural conditioning	journal of business research	63
54	Pentina, Iryna; Zhang, Lixuan; Basmanova, Oksana	2013	Antecedents and consequences of trust in a social media brand: A cross-cultural study of Twitter	computers in human behavior	62
55	Moore, Karl; Reid, Susan	2008	The birth of brand: 4000 years of branding	business history	61
56	Lau, Kong Cheen; Phau, Ian	2007	Extending symbolic brands using their personality: Examining antecedents and implications towards brand image fit and brand dilution	psychology & marketing	60
57	Matzler, Kurt; Strobl, Andreas; Stokburger-Sauer, Nicola; Bobovnicky, Artur; Bauer, Florian	2016	Brand personality and culture: The role of cultural differences on the impact of brand personality perceptions on tourists’ visit intentions	tourism management	59

Abbreviations: R: Ranking; TC: Total citations.

).

Among these papers, it is worth highlighting the one written by Jennifer Aaker [1], which accounts for 15% of the total number of citations on the subject with 2209 citations, published in the Journal of Marketing Research (Q1) by the publishing house SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC. This paper develops a theoretical framework of the construction of brand personality by determining the number and nature of the dimensions that account for this concept, namely: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and robustness.

The second most-cited paper is by Brakus et al. [51], published in the Journal of Marketing Research (Q1) by the publishing house SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC., with 1073 citations accounting for 7% of the total amount. Here, the authors identify several dimensions of experience and construct a brand experience scale that affects consumer satisfaction and loyalty, directly or indirectly, through brand personality associations. Its scale includes four dimensions: sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioural.

3.2. Main Authors

Of the 531 papers in WoS (2020) on the concept of brand personality, 1170 authors were found to be single author and co-authors, with a high dispersion. This is demonstrated with Jennifer Aaker of Stanford University, who is the author with the most citations on the subject (3400), corresponding to 22.3% of the total, with an h-index of 33 and who has four papers within the 30 most influential, followed by Bernd Schmitt with 1085 citations, representing 7.1%, well below Aaker.

Table 3. Most influential authors on brand personality. Source: Compiled by the authors based on Clarivate Web of Science.

R	Author’s Name	Institution	TP-BP	TC-BP	HA	TP	TC	T30
1	Aaker, J.L.	Stanford University	5	3400	33	62	8516	4
2	Schmitt, B.	Concordia University	4	1085	22	55	2744	2
3	Brakus, J.	University of Leeds	1	1073	11	23	1516	1
4	Zarantonello, L.	Roehampton University	1	1073	12	23	1611	1
5	Fournier, S.	Boston University	3	702	17	32	5706	3
6	Brasel, S.A.	Boston College	2	578	10	27	979	1
7	Sirgy, M.	Virginia Polytechnic Institute	4	436	37	172	6804	1
8	Hoyer, W.	University of Texas Austin	2	402	38	81	7246	1
9	Krohmer, H.	University of Bern	2	402	12	15	1402	1
10	Malaer, L.	University of Bern	2	402	3	4	516	1

Abbreviations: R: author’s ranking; TP-BP: total author’s papers on brand personality; TC-BP: total citations of author’s papers on brand personality; HA: author’s h-index; TP: total author’s papers; TC: total citations per author; T30: total author’s papers that are among the 30 most influential papers ever published.

lists the 10 most influential authors, according to the number of citations of their papers on brand personality, the university of affiliation, the h-index, the total number of papers and citations of their papers, and how many of these papers rank in the top 30 most influential in relation to the topic of brand personality.

Although not always recognised among the most influential, there are other authors who, through the writing and publication of papers, have contributed the most to the generation of knowledge on the subject under analysis;

Table 4. The most productive authors on brand personality. Source: Compiled by the authors based on Clarivate Web of Science.

R	Author’s Name	University	TP-BP	TC-BP	PC-BP	% of 531	HA	TP	TC
1	Davies G.	University of Chester	7	174	24.86	1.32%	13	31	596
2	Lee S.	University of Missouri Syst.	6	41	6.83	1.13%	4	9	73
3	Moutinho l.	University of the S. Pacific	6	187	31.17	1.13%	15	92	1243
4	Rojas-Méndez J.I.	Carleton University	6	59	9.83	1.13%	10	21	240
5	Sung Y.J.	Korea University	6	351	58.5	1.13%	21	64	1510

Abbreviations: R: author’s ranking; TP-BP: total author’s papers on brand personality; TC-BP: total citations of author’s papers on brand personality; PC-BP: Citations per paper on Brand personality; % of 531: percentage of total Brand personality papers; HA: author’s h-index; TP: author’s total number of papers; TC: total citations per author.

lists those who have written at least six papers related to brand personality.

Table 4 shows that the author Gary Davies of the University of Chester (England) has published the most papers (7) related to brand personality, which have received 174 citations in total, followed by four other authors who have produced six papers, of which the most cited is Yongjun Sung of the University of Korea with 351 citations. None of these authors are among the 10 most influential.

In relation to the above, Figure 1 provides an analysis of co-authorship between authors on the subject under study. Using the VOSviewer software, the authors are grouped into two clusters, detailed in

Table 5. Clusters on co-authorship for scientific production. Source: Clarivate Web of Science performed with VOSviewer Software.

Cluster 1	Cluster 2
Grohmann, Bianca	Bosnjak, Michael
Herrmann, Andreas	Sirgy, M. Joseph
Lieven, Theo

.

Each cluster represents authors who have teamed up to produce some of the scientific papers. These 2 clusters are illustrated in the graph in Figure 3 highlighted with a specific colour (red or green) with two authors connecting both clusters, Herrmann, A. and Sirgy, M. who have three and four papers respectively. The rest of the authors, who do not appear in the graph, have published one or two papers, but do not form a cluster, as they did not co-operate in a second paper, or they have simply published alone.

3.3. Main Journals

As for the main sources of publication, the 531 papers studied have been published in 226 journals indexed in WoS, with a high degree of dispersion, among which the Journal of Business Research, published by Elsevier Science Inc. stands out with the highest number of papers (30), as well as the highest number of citations per paper, the highest number of total citations and the highest h-index on brand personality. But it is the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Sc. and the journal Tourism Management that have the highest impact factor for 2018, with 9360 and 6012 respectively, the average of the 10 journals being 3453. This factor is a measure of the quality of these journals.

Table 6. Web of Science journals in which scientific production is disseminated. Source: Compiled by the authors based on Web of Science data (2020).

R	Sources (Journals)	NP	% of 531	PC-BP	H-BP	TC-BP	FI 2018	Q
1	Journal of Business Research	30	5.650%	55.83	21	1675	4028	Q1
2	Psychology Marketing	29	5.461%	22.93	14	665	1882	Q2
3	European Journal of Marketing	18	3.390%	35.17	13	633	1716	Q3
4	Tourism Management	12	2.260%	49.33	12	592	6012	Q1
5	Journal of Brand Management	10	1.883%	6.3	5	63	1829	Q3
6	Journal of Product and Brand Management	10	1.883%	7.2	5	72	2018	Q3
7	Journal of Travel Tourism Marketing	9	1.695%	19.89	8	179	2988	Q1
8	European Journal of Marketing	8	1.507%	8.88	5	71	2234	Q3
9	Journal of Consumer Psychology	8	1.507%	77.5	8	620	2466	Q2
10	Journal of the Academy of Marketing sc.	8	1.507%	70	8	560	9360	Q1

Abbreviations: R: Ranking; NP: total number of papers only on brand personality in the journal; % of 531: percentage of papers out of the total number of papers on Brand personality; PC-BP: Average number of citations per paper on Brand personality; H-BP: h-index only with brand personality; TC-BP: total citations only with brand personality; FI 2018: impact factor of the journal in 2018; Q: quartile in the category.

shows the breakdown of the 10 journals with at least eight entries which account for 26.74% of the total number of publications on the subject.

3.4. Wos Categories

In terms the main WoS categories, the 531 papers studied were published in journals belonging to 67 WoS categories (some of these in parallel), with the largest contribution coming from the categories Business (56.3%), followed by Management (20.2%). The category Business also has the highest h-index, the highest average number of citations per paper, the highest number of citations in total and the highest number of papers citing brand personality related papers, as shown in

Table 7. Web of Science categories associated with scientific production. Source: Clarivate Web of Science.

R	Web of Science Categories	NP	% of 531	h-BP	PC-BP	TC-BP	AC
1	Business	299	56.3%	49	39.44	11,792	7229
2	Management	107	20.2%	19	15.44	1652	1287
3	Hospitality Leisure Sport Tourism	100	18.8%	20	15.58	1558	1066
4	Psychology Applied	40	7.5%	19	41.78	1671	1351
5	Communication	28	5.3%	12	18.39	515	486
6	Environmental Studies	17	3.2%	8	35.94	611	465
7	Psychology Applied	16	3.0%	10	39.88	638	580
8	Education Educational Research	9	1.7%	2	3.78	34	34
9	Psychology Multidisciplinary	9	1.7%	4	47.67	429	395
10	Social Sciences Interdisciplinary	9	1.7%	1	0.33	3	3

Abbreviations: R: Ranking; NP: total number of papers only on brand personality in the journal; % of 531: percentage of papers on Brand personality out of the total number of papers; PC-BP: Average number of citations per paper on Brand personality; h-BP: h-index only with brand personality; TC-BP: total citations with brand personality; AC: Number of papers with citations.

.

3.5. Institutions

In terms of affiliation, the authors of the 531 papers produced this knowledge with a low institutional concentration. The papers are affiliated to 706 organisations, of which only nine contributed at least seven papers on this subject.

Table 8. Institutions associated scientific production, by author affiliation. Source Clarivate Web of Science.

R	Organisations	Country	NP	% of 531	h-BP	PC-BP	TC-BP	AC
1	University System of Georgia	United States	14	2.632%	8	46.43	653	574
2	University of Texas System	United States	12	2.256%	9	66	792	688
3	Virginia Polytechnic Institute State University	United States	10	1.880%	7	82.8	828	763
4	Simon Fraser University	Canada	8	1.504%	4	14.63	117	109
5	University of Texas Austin	United States	8	1.504%	7	81.5	652	591
6	Ghent University	Belgium	7	1.316%	4	88.43	619	550
7	Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of High Education	United States	7	1.316%	4	31.86	223	217
8	State University System of Florida	United States	7	1.316%	4	18.71	131	130
9	University of St Gallen	Switzerland	7	1.316%	6	66.57	466	438

Abbreviations: R: Ranking; NP: total number of papers only on brand personality; % of 531: percentage of papers on Brand personality out of the total number of papers; h-BP: h-index only with Brand personality; PC-BP: Average number of citations per paper on Brand personality; TC-BP: total citations with Brand personality; AC: Number of papers with citations.

shows the breakdown of these institutions, ranked by their influence on the topic, measured by the number of papers, their h-index, average number of citations and total citations on brand personality.

Table 8 shows that the institution with the most published papers is the University System of Georgia, with 14 papers. However, the most influential is Virginia Polytechnic Institute State University, as it has the highest number of citations per paper, the highest number of total citations and the highest number of journals citing the university. Finally, the United States are clearly predominant, with nine of the six most relevant institutions in the production of knowledge in this field belonging to this country.

From the bibliometric analysis of citations related to these institutions, 6 clusters are established with a minimum of four documents per organisation, which leaves 41 of the 694 organisations cited.

Table 9. Clusters of citations on institutions that publish on the subject. Source: Web of Science data (2020) with VOSviewer Software.

Cluster 1	Cluster 2	Cluster 3
Univ. Columbia	Carleton Univ.	Concordia Univ.
Indian Institute Management	Curtin Univ.	Univ. Otago
Islamic Azad Univ.	Lulea Univ. Technol.	Univ. Penn
Norwegian Sch. Econ. & Business Adm.	Simon Fraser Univ.	Univ. St. Gallen
Stanford Univ.	Univ. East Anglia	Univ. Western Australia
Univ. Coimbra	Univ. Georgia	Univ. Wollongong
Univ. Ghent	Univ. Manchester	Virginia Polytech Inst. & State Uni.
Univ. Glasgow	Univ. Texas Austin	Yonsei Uni.
Univ. Michigan
Univ. Minho
Univ. Minnesota
Univ. Oregon
Cluster 4	Cluster 5	Cluster 6
Ball State Univ.	Kansas State Univ.	Jinan Univ.
Chung Ang Univ.	Univ. Illinois	Seoul Natl. Univ.
Hanyang Univ.	Univ. Innsbruck
Sejong Univ.	Univ. Tehran
Univ. Houston
Univ. Nevada

shows the breakdown of the six clusters and Figure 4 graph shows the connections between them.

3.6. Countries

In relation to the main countries of affiliation, of the 531 papers analysed, 90% of the papers originate from 10 countries out of a total of 38 countries registering scientific publications in brand personality, a situation detailed in

Table 10. Countries/regions associated scientific production, by author affiliation. Source: Web of Science data (2020).

R	Countries/Regions	NP	% of 531	h-BP	PC-BP	TC-BP	AC
1	United States	193	36.278%	43	54.57	10,532	6846
2	Peoples R China	44	8.271%	10	12.23	538	497
3	England	43	8.083%	15	26.19	1126	995
4	South Korea	36	6.767%	11	25.97	935	849
5	Australia	34	6.391%	14	24.91	847	792
6	Canada	32	6.015%	15	20.09	643	568
7	Germany	32	6.015%	17	39.59	1267	1129
8	India	27	5.075%	6	4.41	119	115
9	Portugal	21	3.947%	4	2.57	54	54
10	France	19	3.571%	8	12.58	239	228

Abbreviations: R: Ranking; NP: total number of papers only with Brand personality; % of 531: percentage of papers on Brand personality out of the total number of papers; h-BP: h-index only with Brand personality; PC-BP: Average number of citations per paper on Brand personality; TC-BP: total citations with Brand personality; AC: Number of papers with citations.

.

The data in Table 10 demonstrate that the United States is the most influential country with 36% of the total number of published papers on brand personality, with the highest h-index, the highest number of citations per paper, the highest number of citations in total and the highest number of papers citing them, followed by China and England with 8% of published papers.

Table 11. Clusters of co-authorship between countries. Source: Compiled by the authors based on VOSviewer.

Cluster 1	Cluster 2	Cluster 3
Australia	Austria	Denmark
Iran	Brazil	Germany
Norway	Colombia	The Netherlands
Singapore	Italy	Poland
Taiwan	Peru	Switzerland
Vietnam	Portugal	Thailand
Cluster 4	Cluster 5	Cluster 6
Belgium	Canada	India
England	Greece	Israel
France	New Zealand	Japan
Kuwait	South Africa	Turkey
Malaysia	Sweden	United States
Oman
Cluster 7	Cluster 8	Cluster 9
Chile	Indonesia	South Korea
Luxembourg	Ireland	Saudi Arabia
Mexico	Pakistan
Spain	Peoples R China

shows the breakdown of the nine clusters and Figure 5 graph shows the connections between the 46 countries and regions, which are grouped by: Australia, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Canada, India, Chile, Indonesia, and South Korea.

3.7. Bibliometric Analysis of Keywords

Of the 2127 words included in the papers published in Web of Science, 166 appear more than five times, and are used concurrently as shown in Figure 6 which comprises nine clusters, as detailed in

Table 12. Co-occurrence clusters in the use of keywords. Source: Web of Science data (2020).

Cluster	Items	Keywords Plus
Cluster 1 (Red)	47	5-factor model, advertising, associations, attributions, big-5, brand, brand attitude, brand equity, brand extensions, brand management, brand personality, branding, choice, cognition, consistency, consumer research, consumer-behavior, consumption, context, culture, decision-making, equity, extension, extensions, fit, judgments, Korea, market, marketing strategy, memory, meta analysis, models, perception, personality persuasion, processing fluency, products, purchase intentions, responses, scale, segmentation, self, self-expression, similarity, symbols, traits, validation.
Cluster 2	32	antecedents, attachment, attributes, behavior, brand experience, brand love, brand loyalty, brand trust, commitment, company identification, consequences, consumer personality, consumers experience, experience, Facebook, information, intentions, loyalty, moderating role, nation brand personality, perceived quality, perceived value, quality, relationship norms, satisfaction, service quality, social identify, strength, structural equation models, trust, twitter, word-of-mouth.
Cluster 3	29	behavioral intentions, congruity, countries, destination, destination brand personality, destination branding, destination image, destination personality, functional congruity, ideal self, image, image congruence, involvement, motivation, orientation, perspective, places, product, product involvement, revisit intention, self-concept, self-congruence, self-congruity, self-image congruence, sponsorship, tourism, tourist, validity
Cluster 4	24	anthropomorphism, attractiveness, brand image, brands, communication, competence, consumer, content analysis, customer satisfaction, design, framework, identification, identity, industry, intention, luxury brands, management, recruitment, relationship quality, reputation, scale development, social media, values
Cluster 5	24	bias, brand familiarity, brand identity, China, co-creation, common, consumer behaviour, consumer perceptions, determinants, familiarity, higher education, innovation, knowledge, marketing, metaphor, model, performance, price, purchase, reliability, service, structural equation modelling, united-states, variables.
Cluster 6	10	attitude, attitudes, celebrity, congruence, gender, impact, mediation, physical attractiveness, purchase intention, source credibility.

below:

The graph in Figure 6 shows a high degree of connections between the different words used by the authors. However, in Table 12 they are grouped at the cluster level, reflecting the different approaches on which the works under study are based, which is graphed in Figure 6, in which the size of the circumference is established by the number of occurrences of the word.

From the above we can establish that from cluster 1 (red), the word “brand personality” is the one that participates in the largest number of groups of words and that in turn has a greater number of occurrences 342. Likewise, in cluster 2 the most predominant word is “model” with 74 occurrences, while in cluster 3 the most predominant word is “antecedents” with 47 occurrences. In cluster 4 the predominant word is “destination image” with 30 occurrences, in cluster 5 the predominant word is “identity” with 25 occurrences, in cluster 6 the most predominant word is “consumers” with 69 occurrences, and finally, in cluster 7 the most predominant word is “impact” with 89 occurrences. Finally, we have made a summary table with the 10 words with the highest occurrence (

Table 13. Co-occurrence clusters in the use of keywords.

N°	Keyword	Occurrences
1	brand personality	342
2	dimensions	157
3	image	96
4	impact	89
5	personality	79
6	culture	74
7	model	74
8	consumers	69
9	behavior	60
10	Satisfaction	56

).

In terms of conceptual grouping, cluster 1 and cluster 2 are the ones with the clearest homogeneity. Cluster 1 mainly addresses the association between concepts relating to brand in general terms (brand attitude, brand equity, brand extensions, brand management, brand personality, branding) and cognitive psychological aspects of the consumer (memory, choice, cognition, consistency, consumer research, consumer-behavior, decision-making, perception, judgments, 5-factor model, personality persuasion, processing fluency). On the other hand, cluster 2 mainly addresses the association between brand concepts and affective or emotional psychological aspects of the consumer (attachment, brand love, brand loyalty, brand trust, commitment, company identification, consumers experience, intentions, loyalty, satisfaction, trust). Clusters 3, 4 and 5 are smaller and more heterogeneous, making it more difficult to identify a defined theoretical field that addresses all the concepts they contain.

It should be noted that in Table 12, it can be seen that the concept that has the most occurrences (with a great advantage over the second), is that of brand personality, which, despite being classified in cluster 1, corresponds to the concept more transversal to all the clusters (hence, the central position it has in the graph.).

4. Discussion

The literature on brand personality reveals the existence of a critical mass generated in the period covered by the study. 531 papers were identified, with an exponential growth in terms of production and a steady growth in terms of number of quotations, with Aaker being the most cited author and Davies the most productive. This reveals that the field of knowledge is expanding, both in terms of the amount of knowledge generated and the amount of knowledge referenced, which implies a solidification of such knowledge.

The foregoing follows the line of what was evidenced by Saeed and his collaborators in 2021 [52], who highlight the importance that the concept of brand personality has had in the field of research in the last two decades. These same authors, through a systematic review of the concept of brand personality, come to the conclusion that the field, in addition to being expanding, has relevant practical implications for the professional world (even providing useful information for professionals who work in this field).

The main papers are by long-standing authors who are constantly publishing and have a lasting and above-average impact, which makes them the publications with the highest impact in the group under study. Thus, the papers by the 10 most influential authors are among the 30 most influential. There are other authors who show high productivity, but none of them are among the 10 most influential. This shows that the field is not exclusively nourished by scattered authors who casually publish in the area, but rather by authors who have dedicated their research careers to the field.

Clusters on co-authorship for scientific production were also identified. Each cluster represents authors who have teamed up to produce some of the papers. Two authors connect both clusters, Herrmann, A. and Sirgy, M. who have three and four papers respectively. The rest of the authors have published one or two papers, but do not form a cluster as they did not co-operate in a second paper, or they have simply published alone. This highlights the fact that, although some authors have developed their careers in this area, there is still a lack of research groups that pool their efforts to produce scientific work on the subject.

Cluster 1 and cluster 2, which were the ones that presented the greatest number of concepts and the greatest internal homogeneity between them, are directly related and reaffirm the conceptual developments mentioned in the Section 1 of the article by various authors. The conceptual grouping of cluster 1 referred to the association between the brand personality and the cognitive psychological aspects of the consumer, while the conceptual grouping of cluster 2 referred to the association of the brand personality with the affective or emotional psychological aspects of the consumer. Both clusters reflect the importance of human traits associated with a brand, which have been previously highlighted [1,2]. In the case of cluster 1, which highlights the importance of the cognitive psychological aspects of the consumer, it has been previously surveyed regarding the importance of brand personality with respect to decision-making processes and how these influence behavior [5,6]. On the other hand, regarding cluster 2, which highlights the importance of the affective or emotional psychological aspects of the consumer, it has been previously surveyed regarding the importance of the constitution of the brand personality from elements associated with the connection emotion generated by the brand in the consumer [4] and the experiences that generate loyalty to the brand [5,6,17,18].

As for the main sources of publication, the papers under study have been published in 226 journals indexed in WoS, with a high degree of dispersion. This study is based on 10 journals with at least eight entries which account for 26.74% of the total number of publications on the subject. In terms the main WoS categories, the papers studied were published in journals belonging to 67 WoS categories, with the largest contribution coming from the categories Business with 56.3%, followed by Management with 20.2%. This could be interpreted as a tendency for brand personality to move out of its area of origin (i.e., marketing, within the business area), and be used in management or even other areas.

In terms of affiliation, scientists have produced this knowledge with a low institutional concentration and are affiliated to 706 organisations, mainly in the United States, the country with the highest productivity. Likewise, the main journals disseminating this scientific production are from the U.S.A., making it the most influential country. From the bibliometric analysis of citations related to the institutions, 6 clusters were established with a minimum of four documents per organisation, which leaves 41 of the 694 organisations cited. In relation to the main countries of affiliation, 90% of the papers originate from 10 countries out of a total of 38 countries with the United States being the most influential with 36% of the total publications.

In terms of co-authorship between countries, 46 countries or regions are grouped into nine clusters centralised in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Canada, India, Chile, Indonesia, and South Korea. In relation to the bibliometric analysis of keywords, 166 appear more than five times, and are used concurrently, accounting for nine clusters, thus confirming the various focuses used for the development of the papers under study.

Although we do not entirely agree with what was mentioned by Llanos-Herrera and Merigo in 2019 [35], who consider that the study of brand personality is a field in an early stage of development (we rather, from the results presented, we consider that it is a consolidated field), we fully agree with these authors in the fact that there is an important development of the field ahead, which will bring not only theoretical contributions, but also practical ones.

5. Conclusions

The contribution of the study carried out focuses on the identification of the development and trends associated with the scientific production referred to the concept of brand personality. The conclusion is that brand personality is a subject that many authors have been interested in, especially in the past few decades and in several areas of knowledge. This means that brand personality goes beyond the marketing perspective and encompass the production of knowledge in different disciplines such as business, psychology, services, communication, education, and social sciences in general. Furthermore, the literature on brand personality should be systematised; the negative aspects of the anthropomorphic association between brand personality and human personality should be studied in depths; and issues of social interest, such as the relationship between brand personality and social responsibility and brand personality in the digital context and the new ways in which consumers acquire products and information should also be delved into.

The limitations of this study are mainly associated with its methodological aspect. Although the inclusion of scientific articles that had the WoS indexation was used as a criterion, other quality control filters of the articles were not considered. By including only articles from the WoS databases, only limited access to knowledge generation was possible in languages such as Spanish and French. Likewise, it was not possible to exercise a more specific control over the contents of the articles analyzed, although this is related to the fact that this is an initial article that seeks to outline a general overview of the scientific production associated with the concept of brand personality. In this research, only the scientific production associated with scientific articles was considered, excluding review articles, proceedings, books and other scientific products. This was done in this way to have a more stable comparison standard over time, taking into account that the production of scientific articles has been the most stable and formal source of knowledge production in the scientific field. Future research should consider the limitations of this study in order to make an additional contribution to this field.

The practical implications of this study are related to the fact that the concept of brand personality escapes the field of marketing, both in research and professional terms. In this way, future lines of research, as well as the practical development of the work carried out in organizations must consider this, in the sense of taking advantage of the value of the brand personality in its fullness.