Brand personality, the inference of human personality traits onto brands (Aaker, 1997).
- Enhances consumers’ ability to recognize the inherent values of a brand (Morhart, Malär, Guèvremont, Girardin, & Grohmann, 2015).
- Consumers are growing increasingly fond of humanized brands and now even relate to brands in the same way they relate to people (Brown, 2010).
Consumers form relationships with brands (Fournier 1998) and develop distinct communities around brands (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001).
The act of attaching human-like characteristics to brands or other non-human entities is called anthropomorphism. Brand managers often encourage this phenomenon of anthropomorphizing by creating brand characters, mascots, and spokespeople.
Brands are given faces and names, and they are endowed with human emotions. Similarly, brands can develop their own set of social values, care about social issues and even have ideological leanings.