초록
A cross-cultural study was carried out in Germany and in South Korea in order to investigate the relationship between brand personality and product personality facilitating the three dimensions of personality agreeableness, excitement, and extroversion. Two pairs of shoes were prepared across categories of product function symbolic (a pair of high-heeled shoes) versus utilitarian (a pair of sport shoes). In experiments, each pair of shoes was labeled as a luxury brand ("Versace") or a casual brand ("C&A", Germany; "Migliore", South Korea) or left unlabeled. Prior to the experiments, an expert group in each country evaluated the brand personality in terms of "cheerful" (agreeableness), "honest"(conscientiousness), and "provocative" (extroversion) and the results were considered as a baseline. In Experiment I and II, subjects were exposed to two pairs of shoes labeled in one of the three ways and assessed the personality of both pairs of shoes using the personality traits, cheerful, honest, and provocative. Identical versions of the experiment were conveyed in Germany (N=56), an individualist culture, and in South Korea (N=72), a collectivist culture, and we purposed to find cultural differences in evaluating product personalities influenced by brands. The empirical results do not show any significant influence of brand personality on product personality in either cultural group (p>.05). Nevertheless, the subjects estimated the retail price of the shoes to be significantly different depending on the brands in both cultural groups (p<.001).
