Ingeniero

When Brand Personality Matters: The
Moderating Role of Attachment Styles
VANITHA SWAMINATHAN
KAREN M. STILLEY
ROHINI AHLUWALIA*
This research examines the moderating role of consumer’s attachment style in the
impact of brand personality. Findings support our hypotheses regarding the manner
in which brand personality and attachment style differences systematically influence brand outcomes,including brand attachment, purchase likelihood, and brand
choice. Results show that anxiously attached individuals are more likely to be
differentially influenced by brand personalities. Further, the results indicate that the
level of avoidance predicts the types of brand personality that are most relevant
to anxious individuals. Specifically, under conditions of high avoidance and highanxiety, individuals exhibit a preference for exciting brands; however, under conditions of low avoidance and high anxiety, individuals tend to prefer sincere brands.
The differential preference for sincere (vs. exciting) brand personality emerges in
public (vs. private) consumption settings and in settings where interpersonal relationship expectations are high, supporting a signaling role of brandpersonality
in these contexts.

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a managerial and a theoretical point to understand the underlying mechanisms invoked under different circumstances
and to identify moderators that provide more specific insights into which brand personality traits are going to matter
to consumers. We adopt an attachment theory (Bowlby
1980) perspective to provide a richer understanding of the
role of brandpersonality in influencing consequential branding outcomes such as brand attachment, purchase likelihood,
and brand choice, especially under marketplace settings
where consumers are not explicitly directed to pay attention
to the brand’s personality.
Attachment theory has identified two dimensions of attachment style based on the individual’s view of self and
view of others, that is, anxiety andavoidance, respectively,
which are expected to influence the type of relationships
one engages in and the potential for forming attachments
in the interpersonal domain (Bartholomew and Horowitz
1991; Bartz and Lydon 2004; Collins and Read 1994; Pierce
and Lydon 1998). We propose that a consumer’s attachment
style (based on these two dimensions) will moderate the
effect of brand personalityon crucial marketing outcomes
such as brand attachment, purchase likelihood, and brand
choice.
Our research suggests that not all consumers are equally
sensitive to a brand’s personality, especially in marketplace
settings that do not direct them to explicitly focus on this
aspect of the brand. Importantly, interpersonal attachment
styles are shown to determine what types of consumers aremost likely to be influenced by a brand’s personality. Our

hat brands have personalities or human characteristics
is now well established in the literature, as is the idea
that brand personality is a vehicle of consumer self-expression and can be instrumental in helping a consumer express
different aspects of his or her self (Aaker 1997; Belk 1988;
Escalas and Bettman 2005; Johar, Sengupta,and Aaker
2005). Humanizing a brand empowers it to play a more
central role in the consumer’s life, potentially enabling the
consumer to project an aspect of his or her self that might
be desirable for relationships he or she seeks (Aaker 1997;
Wallendorf and Arnould 1988) or possibly even give him
or her a sense of comfort at having found a brand that “fits”
with his or her self-concept(Aaker 1999; Sirgy 1985; Swaminathan, Page, and Gurhan-Canli 2007). In order to harness
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the potential of brand personality, it is important from both

*Vanitha Swaminathan is associate professor of marketing, Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, 344 Mervis Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 (vanitha@katz.pitt.edu). Karen Stilley is a doctoral student at the Katz Graduate School...