City Brand Personality : The Application of Brand Personality Concept in the City Context

The concept of brand personality proposed by Aaker (1997) consists of five dimensions: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. This concept was drawn from the development of products in general so as to describe personality of brands, and has been widely applied to research on a range of products available in the market. However, relatively few studies have utilized this concept in the context of an area, a country or a city. The present study thus aims to investigate how the brand personality concept can be applied in the city context. In so doing, this research has employed a quantitative method with a factor analysis in order to identify personality traits and dimensions of a city in relation to the brand personality concept. Results reveal that city brand personality is comprised of 37 traits in five dimensions whereas brand personality consists of 42 traits in five dimensions. Therefore, this study has exhibited a significant finding that the brand personality concept can explain a city as a product, which serves as a useful guideline for further developing a scale of city personality