عقیده قدرت فاصله و ارزیابی شخصیت برند Power distance belief and brand personality evaluations

1. Introduction Brand personality refers to “the set of human characteristics associated with a brand” (Aaker, 1997, p. 347). Brands, as consumption symbols, not only can help consumers express their various self-concepts but also can represent the values and beliefs of a culture. For example, Aaker, Benet-Martínez, and Garolera (2001) find that Japan and the United States share a certain set of brand personality dimensions, including sincerity, excitement, competence, and sophistication, but also have culture-specific Japanese (peacefulness) and American (ruggedness) dimensions. By asking consumers to rate a set of global brands on the same personality attributes in Korea and the United States, Sung and Tinkham (2005) identify six common brand personality traits (i.e., likeableness, trendiness, competence, sophistication, traditionalism, and ruggedness). More importantly, they also find two culture-specific attributes (i.e., passive likeableness and ascendancy) in Korea and two unique attributes (white collar and androgyny) in the United States, indicating that cultural meaning is embedded in brand personality structure. Indeed, cultural values and beliefs change consumer brand personality perceptions. It is thus desirable and important to examine how cultural beliefs influence evaluations of brand personality. Traditionally, cross-cultural researchers have studied extensively the influence of individualism/collectivism (or independent/interdependent self-construal at the individual level) on brand meanings (e.g., Wong & Ahuvia, 1998). For example, Escalas and Bettman (2005) observe that all consumers have high self-brand connections for ingroup brands, but for outgroup brands, independents have lower selfbrand connections than interdependents do. However, limited research attention has been paid to power distance belief (PDB), the first cultural dimension studied by Hofstede (2001, p. 79), and its influence on consumer perceptions and behavior. Hofstede (2001, p. 83) states that PDB refers to the extent to which people “accept and expect that power is distributed unequally” throughout society. Although within a culture and also across cultures human inequality in power, wealth, and prestige is ubiquitous in social societies, only recently has the topic of how PDB influences consumers’ attitudes and behavior gradually gained attention. To date, a handful of studies have examined the effect of PDB on impulsive buying (Zhang, Winterich, & Mittal, 2010), charitable donations (Winterich & Zhang, 2011), price-quality judgments (Lalwani & Forcum, 2016), status consumption (Gao, Winterich, & Zhang, 2016; Kim & Zhang, 2014), and life insurance consumption (Chui & Kwok, 2008). Various theoretical mechanisms have been proposed to account for the effects of PDB. For example, Zhang et al. (2010) suggest that high PDB activates greater self-control, which in turn reduces impulsive buying. Winterich and Zhang (2011) argue that high PDB triggers low perceived responsibility, which leads to low charity donations. Most recently, Lalwani and Forcum (2016) show that consumers with high PDB have a higher need for structure, which results in a greater tendency to use price to judge quality.