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This study aims to explore how brands use brand personification techniques in real-time marketing on social media, particularly Twitter, and examine how these techniques impact consumer engagement, moderated by brand-event congruence levels.

Data included 464 tweets posted by 95 brands around three large events in 2019. The types of brand personification techniques and the level of brand-event congruence applied by the tweets were content-analyzed, and regression analyses were conducted to examine their linkages to consumer engagement metrics.

Results confirmed the use of diverse personification techniques in brands’ real-time marketing tweets as in the previous literature. The study also revealed a new personification technique, tacit expression, not reported in previous literature. The study also showed that the overall effectiveness of multimedia-based (vs caption-based) personification techniques in increasing consumer engagement on social media was greater, but their relative effectiveness varied depending on whether or not the event was functionally congruent with the brand.

The findings offer valuable suggestions to brand managers regarding prioritizing brand personification techniques and aligning brands’ social media marketing with real-time events to maximize the effectiveness of real-time marketing in boosting consumer engagement.

This research offers insights into the dynamic effects of different brand personification techniques in the new context of real-time marketing, extending the scope of literature on brand personification and anthropomorphism. The revelation of a new type of brand personification not captured in the extant literature is also a significant contribution.

The purpose of this paper is an examination of the role of brand personification in the development of the concepts of brand personality and brand relationships.

The paper is a critical evaluation of literature from the 1950s and onwards, examining the evolution and development of brand personality and brand relationship theory and the role of brand personification.

The major finding is that brand personification was developed as a research “gimmick” and that this “gimmick” provided the foundations for the development of the brand personality and brand relationship concepts. Further, the paper traces the evolution of the brand personality concept and identifies the ways in which it has been adapted from its original meaning.

The paper contributes to the branding literature by providing a critical evaluation of the history of marketing concepts and by providing insights into the role that motivation research played in the development of modern brand theory.

Frontline service providers are a key touchpoint in a customer’s overall experience with a brand. Though they are recognized as important contributors to brand experiences, service providers have received relatively little attention in both experienced marketing and branding research. This paper aims to illuminate the importance of understanding factors that contribute to the role services providers play within the environmental context of the customer’s brand journey.

This study uses two experimental studies to show that greater customer happiness and customer loyalty could be achieved through collective brand personification whereby the frontline service provider’s identity and core values align with those of the brand persona and store environment.

Specifically, findings reveal that customer happiness increases because of feelings of belongingness and greater brand authenticity when the service provider aligns with the retailer’s brand persona and store environment.

While this study gets us closer to understanding how managers can leverage human capital in the retail service environment, there are opportunities to further explore issues such as the impact of collective brand personification on the employee.

Given the strong desire companies have to bolster customer happiness to increase brand loyalty, the findings bolster the importance of understanding the influential factors associated with frontline service providers. Their role in creating optimal customer experiences should not be underestimated.

As an important cautionary note, firms should take care when creating the appearance and personality-based occupational qualifications by considering social norms and the impact on societal well-being (e.g. self-consciousness and exclusion can lead to serious illnesses and including depression). Study shows that people have an inherent need to feel accepted and belong to social groups that help to construct and affirm their self-concept, and appreciate opportunities that empower them to seize control against exclusion. Therefore, appearance and personality-based occupational qualifications should be strategically aligned with the image and goals of the firm, and not subject to management bias from an unconscious reaction to an applicant’s physical and interpersonal presentation.

The present study builds on both customer experience and branding literature by examining the relationship between customer happiness and collective brand personification – where the frontline service provider’s identity and core values align with those of the brand. Two experiments test the hypotheses that customer happiness increases because of feelings of belongingness with the brand and the consumer’s perception of the brand’s authenticity when the customer service provider aligns with the brand’s identity and core values.

Given the thriving attention paid to brand personification in marketing, this paper aims to delve into consumers’ psychological traits that may moderate the positive anthropomorphic effects on brand outcomes specific to relationship marketing.

A theoretical model was proposed based on a review of the extant literature. Study 1 conducted an online survey and used confirmatory factor analysis to validate the constructs significantly correlated with anthropomorphic processing. Two follow-up studies (Study 2a and 2b) using experimental designs were performed to provide evidence substantiating the moderated mediation in the process.

Based on the results across the three studies, motivational, rather than cognitive, disposition significantly correlates with perceived anthropomorphism and brand relationship outcomes. Need for belonging serves as a sociality moderator in strengthening the mediating effects of perceived anthropomorphism on brand attachment and brand experience, respectively. Parasocial interaction serves as an effectance moderator in augmenting the mediating effects of perceived anthropomorphism on brand attachment.

This research extends and contrasts the theoretical grounding for anthropomorphism as a set of situational consumer perceptions by integrating its boosting factors in social psychology with emerging brand constructs in marketing and consumer behavior research. More studies are encouraged to probe into the complex anthropomorphic phenomenon.

This research sheds light on marketers’ strategic management efforts in implementing brand personification to target a wide range of market segments with diverse psychological disposition.

Conceiving anthropomorphism as an in-process situational output in information processing, this research provides further understanding of the psychological traits that facilitate the construction of consumer-brand relationships through anthropomorphic perceptions in the context of brand personification.

The purpose of this study is to bring theories of branding and relationship marketing together under the lens of the brand manager and reseller relationship for integrating into a single paradigm. The conceptualization bridges a gap in theory and practice by explaining how a brand can be managed by brand managers building empathetic relationships with resellers and understanding their requirements.

It draws upon qualitative methodology and data collected from 12 business-to-business resellers for brands and 8 brand managers working for international brands in India.

Brand personified and represented in research questions investigated showed the enablement aspects of brand representatives in competitive reseller networks.

The findings of this study will be very useful for brand managers aiming to penetrate markets through individuals who could represent their brands to resellers.

This study will help brand managers to create a stronger brand-reseller relationship marketing strategy by incorporating the emotional aspect of personification to benefit a socially driven relationship.

This study offers new insights into the temporal aspects of branding for business-to-business markets.

This paper presents the approach of a one‐to‐one relationship for branding in business‐to‐business markets. With qualitative evidence, the paper seeks to clarify the links between branding, relationship marketing and purchase intention of resellers and to discuss the contribution of brand personified as brand representatives to the brand knowledge of resellers. The aim of this paper is to understand how this transfer of knowledge by brand personified as representatives of the brand is reflected in the selection process of brand for resale by resellers.

The theory is used to develop a testable model. Information from the field was gathered through 12 in‐depth interviews of brand managers of international IT brands. These interviews helped to give a deeper insight into the topic and contributed to the categorization of different themes to be developed into constructs. Components that emerged from the interviews were from different disciplines and were useful in making linkages between these disciplines.

Interviewees associated the role of brand personified (as brand representative) as a conduit between brand and resellers. Given the findings, brand when personified as a human can be used to manage reseller relationships in a business‐to‐business network. The brand personified with its metaphorical properties enables the resellers not only to clearly understand brand‐related information but also to make positive evaluations about the brand. Empirical research would be helpful to establish the indicators of brand personification and to enhance the understanding of the concept.

The study will be useful for senior managers of brands operating in competitive and complex business‐to‐business networks. It will enable them to use the categories and components to ensure that their brand is the preferred brand for resellers operating in the network.

The approach will be helpful in linking different functions of the organization to measure the contribution made by employees representing the brand to resellers in competitive markets by imparting knowledge about the brand to resellers.

Although marketer-generated brand anthropomorphism impacts on positive company returns is studied broadly, consumer-generated brand anthropomorphisms that focus on demonizing and hitlerizing brands is not extensively studied. This study aims to examine these consumer interpretations of the evil, its symbols and personifications of brands as evil, with a new concept: “reverse brand anthropomorphism.”

This paper provides a literature review of brand anthropomorphism and the application of the concept of evil. This paper also uses a qualitative analysis with consumer interviews to explore the proposed reverse brand anthropomorphism concept.

This study’s findings reveal that consumers see corporations as consciously evil, loosely as an embodiment of Adolf Hitler. Consumer interviews points out that corporate brand power aimed at controlling consumer value systems is associated with “evil,” an evil that secretly aims at possessing consumers and controlling their consumption practices. The findings of this study indicate that consumers also develop their own alternative moral market value systems, ones parallel to religious morality. Although “evil” imagery is often found distractive and disrespectful by consumers, the younger generation accept it as a new and alternative form of market speech.

This is the first study to introduces and conceptualize a “reverse brand anthropomorphism” concept with examples of consumer brand hitlerization semiotics. Further, this study is also the first study to discuss evil in a consumption context.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the role of the human metaphor (anthropomorphism) and consumers’ liking for the humanized version of the brand as antecedents of three key components of brand love: self-brand integration, positive emotional connection and feelings of anticipated separation distress.

A sample of 399 consumers provided information about a brand from a stated list of 16 brands of clothing.

Both anthropomorphism and consumers’ liking for the humanized brand have positive effects on specific components of brand love. The results confirm that brand anthropomorphism is only desirable when the humanized version of the brand is attractive for consumers.

A potential shortcoming is the qualitative technique employed to observe anthropomorphic thought. Collecting ratings of anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic traits could be viewed as a method more easily applied in market research surveys.

Managers have to control how consumers imagine the brand as a human entity because it affects brand love. For example, by tracking consumers’ opinions and traits of those people associated with the brand and brand user stereotypes can condition consumers’ imagination of the humanized brand.

Compared to the limited number of studies about the relationship between anthropomorphism and brand love, this study focuses on the effects of anthropomorphism as a process, and not as a personal trait, on brand love. It also relies on consumers’ imagination instead of brand personification strategies to stimulate anthropomorphism.

The purpose of this paper is to unearth common perceptions of non-profit organization (NPO) trust and reputation, with a specific focus in their overlaps and intersections. Examining the two concepts in tandem allows a more comprehensive approach offering new insights.

This study is devoted to the analysis of the interplay of NPO trust and reputation combining semantic network analysis with a personification approach. The data are collected via semi-structured interviews with 482 individuals.

The present results reveal both common (e.g. charitable, credible) and unique (e.g. illuminating, nice) personality traits. Findings also demonstrate that reputation is a broader concept than trust, with more characteristics. Moreover, it is possible to state that NPOs deemed reputable have a 50% chance of being trusted.

Clearly delineating the relationship between the concepts of NPO trust and reputation has certain conceptual significance and practical value. As traits are grouped in the existing taxonomy categories based on the analysis, it could contribute to improving understanding of these constructs, as well as a modification in the existing classification.

This study aims to assist NPO managers by providing a list of ideal traits for NPO reputation and trust. It can serve as a guide for managers to assess their own perceptions, for comparison with those of competitors.

To the authors' knowledge, this study is the first attempt to provide an interrelated perspective to the study of NPO trust and reputation through semantic network and personification approach.

Over the past two decades, technology-facilitated communication between brand and consumer has become common. One way in which technology can be used to build brand relationships in the online environment is by using brand avatars. This study considers social aspects of brand avatar communication, with the aim of determining if including an element of “socialness” adds to the impact of the brand avatar.

Specifically, the authors test three outcome variables core to building strong consumer relationships through experimental design comparing an avatar's communication style (transactional vs social) while considering the potential covariate of motivational orientation.

Overall, multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) results indicate that social functions provided by the brand avatar are more likely to facilitate the consumer–brand relationship (CBR) process than transactional functions. This study provides managerial support for using an avatar with social communication capabilities.

As social interaction becomes more expected by consumers in the current media landscape, understanding how to meet those demands on a large scale, through brand avatars, is valuable.