THE CONGRUENCY EFFECT OF CULTURAL - SPECIFIC BRAND PERSONALITY TRAITS AND NATIONAL CULTURE ON BRAND EVALUATION

Brand personality embodies two cultural dimensions, cultural- specific personality and universal personality. Both serve to represent and institutionalize the values and beliefs of a culture. In this paper I further discuss brand with cultural-specific personality traits. The argument is that the congruency of cultural specific personality traits and national traits should lead to a positive evaluation of the brands. However, the incongruence between culturalspecific personality traits and national culture should lead to different evaluation based on the culture openness to new experience and exclusivity. For collectivist, brands that have cultural-specific personality traits and are congruent (vs. incongruent) with their national culture are more likely to be positively evaluated. For individualists, brands that have cultural-specific personality traits and are incongruent (vs. congruent) with their national culture are more likely to be positively evaluated.