Brand Ethical Personality Model in Iran's Consumer Products Market

What is referred to as a trade name is something far more than a name. Some psychological research on ethics suggests that information about specific ethical characteristics of brands can be considered as the ethical "character" of the brand. The present study tries to draw the model of ethical personality of the brand in Iran's consumer products market.

The current study was developmental-applied research and was conducted using a mixed method (qualitative-quantitative). In the qualitative part, the statistical population included all experts in management and marketing sciences, 29 of whom were selected by purposeful sampling. The tool was semi-structured interviews and the results were extracted with content analysis method and NVivo software. In the quantitative part, the statistical population included all the consumers of the selected brands of the national festival of the top popular Iranian brands in the second half of 2016 in Tehran. From this society, a sample of 1670 people was selected by stratified sampling method with proportional allocation. The questionnaire tool was researcher-made and the data were analyzed by performing exploratory factor analysis and then confirmatory factor analysis.

The findings of this study included 74 ethical indicators in the qualitative part, and in the quantitative part of the research, among the 74 personality traits identified for the brands of consumer products in the Iranian market, only 22 ethical indicators have a sufficient factor load and the necessary sufficiency to explain. They had a confirmed model that was categorized into 5 personality factors.

The factors and indicators that make up the brand's ethical personality model include five factors; 1) Pleasurable (dignified, distinguished, hardworking, always helpful, powerful and strong, skilled, attractive, creative); 2) Qualified businessman (efficient, worthy and worthy, competitive); 3) Efficient (friend of the little ones, old friend, funny); 4) Intimacy agent (inefficient, uncommitted, duplicitous, unkind); 5) Narcissistic agent (forceful, tyrannical, mischievous, narcissistic).