Recommendations for Sustainable Brand Personalities: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Sustainability marketing has emerged as an important trend both in practice and academic literature. The relevant literature has heavily focused on determinations of sustainable consumer behavior, and practitioners have used these results to derive short-term marketing decisions, e.g., adequate pricing of sustainable products. However, no study has scrutinized derivations of sustainable brand personalities or provided important long-term, strategic, managerial implications for marketing managers of sustainable brands. This study aims to contribute to this underrepresented research field and makes recommendations for preferred brand personality dimensions for sustainable brands. First, the personality structure of sustainable consumers by using a preference-based two-step segmentation approach is investigated, and subsequent profiling of the sustainable consumer segment is conducted. The research relies on the results of an empirical discrete choice experiment and a personality test, including the data of a representative German consumer sample. Sustainable consumers were found to be highly agreeable and open. Second, the personality results of sustainable consumers are linked to consumers’ personality-specific preferred brand personalities. Third, recommendations for harmonic brand personality dimensions for sustainable brands, e.g., competence, excitement, and sincerity, are derived, and therefore, long-term, strategic, managerial implications are provided.