Big Five Personality Traits and Brand Evangelism

The objective of the study is to understand the relationships between each of the Big Five Personality Traits and the concept of brand evangelism. The hypotheses tested are whether brand evangelism relates to each of the Big 5 Personality Traits consisting of extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and agreeableness. A brand evangelist frequently exhibits a strong desire to influence consumption behavior. The research method of this study was based on the implementation of 528 self-administered questionnaires. The results include descriptive characteristics, Cronbach’s alphas, correlations and a multivariate regression model for testing the hypotheses. The results of the overall regression model show significance. Brand evangelism is significantly related to extraversion, openness and neuroticism. Future research is also discussed as understanding these personality traits and what drives individuals with these traits to become brand evangelists can strengthen a company’s success with its brand(s).


Introduction
Interactions among consumers, culture, and technology will result in new brands which will extend beyond corporate-designed experiences to individual control and the fulfillment of personal values and aspirations (Bevolo & Brand, 2003).However, how do interactions between consumers drive a company's success and specifically what makes consumers developing strong relationships to a particular brand (Matzler, Bidmon and Grabner-Krauter, 2006)?Distinct brand personality comes into place in the success of a brand and is even linked to personality traits (Lin, 2010).The objective of the study is to understand the correlation between each of the Big Five Personality Traits and brand evangelism.The Big Five consists of factor-analytic research which is considered to be the personality psychology's answer to chemistry's Periodic Table of Elements (Lamiell, 2000).Doss (2014) defines the term, brand evangelist, as a consumer that freely communicates positive information, ideas and feelings on a particular brand.A brand evangelist frequently exhibits a strong desire to influence consumption behavior.Additionally, brand evangelists voluntarily convert other consumers to the use of a particular brand (Kemp, Childers, & Williams, 2012).Becerra and Badrinarayanan (2013) also discuss the term brand evangelist as an intense willingness to endorse the brand and persuade others to purchase it.Previous research discusses the importance of marketing in providing value to the company through providing value to the consumer (American Marketing Association, 2007;Kachersky & Lerman, 2013;Vazifehdoost, Akbari, & Charsted, 2012).Nadeem (2007) suggests that successful companies also understand that it is not just in providing value to consumers but to also view employees as brand evangelists.Nordstrom encourages employees to make decisions that improve customer service and Starbucks' baristas are highly valued through intense training and compensation packages.Furthermore, REI employees are encouraged to perform outdoor activities and use their brands through employee discounts and free gear rental.This study goes beyond the determination of how to provide value to the consumer or employee.It extends into determining why a person becomes a brand evangelist and whether specific personality traits of extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and agreeableness are present among those that are brand evangelists.

Brands and Consumers
Brands are signs, symbols, designs and unique names that can be popular for a long time, short time or not at all.Specifically, a brand is a signifier that acts as a representation for the product as well as the reflection of the identity of the corporation (Desmond, 2003).These representations and reflections were discussed by Gardner and Levy (1955, p. 35) when a brand name "tells the consumers many things, not only by the way it sounds (and its literal meaning if it hasone) but, more important, via the body of associations it has built up and acquired as a public object over a period of time." The role of marketers is to create relationships with consumers (Kachersky & Lerman, 2013).The study suggests that consumer bias is to view marketing as serving business' interests instead of consumers' interests.The perception amongst consumers is often that research is driven by how marketers can make more money instead of how they can help consumer's lives to be better.Therefore, a gap is in existence between the intentions of marketers and the perceptions of consumers.Matzler et al. (2006) research is of interest to marketers who want their consumers to bond with a brand as it results in brand loyalty as their findings suggest consumers that score high on extraversion and openness respond stronger to affective stimuli which are of relevance to market segmentation and targeting.Lin (2010) defines consumer loyalty as the degree of the relationship between a consumer's relative attitude and repeat patronage (Lin, 2010).
The area of brand equity has received attention from marketers as it investigates which brand associations have the greatest effect on consumer behavior (Del Rio, Vȧzquez, & Iglesias, 2001).The study findings suggest that brands that are able to personally identify with a consumer through a brand's ability to emotional link to a consumer and express a consumer's self-concept produce consumers that are more willing to recommend the brand to others.Marketers need to examine different ways to achieve emotional links and expression of a consumer's self-concept.A research study by Ampuero and Vila (2006) explored product packaging in exploring consumer perceptions of product packaging so that packaging meets consumer's expectations.This is one potential way to help brands to better associate with their consumers.
Generic brands are still in existence despite their impressive rise and then fall in the twentieth century (Herstein & Tifferet, 2007).A study performed examined the profile of consumers of generic brands which suggested that those with large families with a high degree of education tend to buy generic products.Included in this profile are senior citizens as the primary consumer of generic brands.Marketers may have a potential area of growth if generic brands enter product categories not typically represented by generic brands since the degree of willingness to purchase generic brands is existent.
Another development with marketing is the ability for companies to mass-customize products.Bardakci and Whitelock (2003) explored that to understand consumers interest in mass-customization, a few questions needed to be answered.First, consumers would need to likely pay extra for these customizable products.The amount of money that consumers are willing to pay needs to be identified.Secondly, customers likely will not be able to obtain a customizable product as quickly as a generic product.Therefore, the amount of time consumers are willing to wait for a customizable product needs to be answered.Once these questions are answered, marketers would be able to move forward in building proper relationships and expectations with consumers.
There are three similar but distinctly different terms important to discuss, although this research focus in on the concept of being a brand evangelist.The three terms are brand evangelists, opinion leaders and market mavens.Figure 1 displays the breadth of knowledge for each term as market mavens have an understanding of an entire market for shopping to include multiple products and brands (Feick & Price, 1987), opinion leaders have an understanding of a specific area within a market over multiple products and brands (Flynn, Goldsmith, & Eastman, 1996) and brand evangelists have an understanding and a commitment of products related to a specific brand (Doss, 2014).Therefore, market mavens have the widest range of knowledge spanning an entire market of shopping and brand evangelists the smallest range of knowledge although in-depth knowledge within a particular brand.
Opinion leadership is "the degree to which an individual is able to influence other individuals' attitudes or overt behavior informally in a desired way with relative frequency" (Rogers, 2003, p. 27).A key component of this definition is the concept of influence.Without the ability to influence others' beliefs, attitudes or consumption behavior, there is no opinion leadership.Additionally, there is a geographic component to opinion leadership as they influence others within their "immediate environment" (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955, p. 3).Opinion leaders have also been called "influentials" (Watts & Dodds, 2007).

Figure 1. Breadth of knowledge
Both opinion leaders andinfluentialsare individuals who influence their peers' behavior.An opinion leader influences the exchange of information by being perceived as a leader within a particular area due to their knowledge and authority (Rogers, 2003).Therefore, opinion leaders have information that is product-class specific (Lyons & Henderson, 2005).These individuals are not considered leaders or heads of formal organizations, norare they in the public eyevia politics, critics, or other media (Watts & Dodds, 2007).Opinion leaders are considered a primary component in the diffusion of innovations because of the word-of-mouth communication by the opinion leaders (Arndt, 1967;Bass, 1969;Rogers, 2003).
Another concept within the opinion leadership literature is market mavens.These individuals are consumers who have a broad knowledge concerning goods, services, the attainment of the products, and general market information (Feick & Price, 1987).Like opinion leaders, these individuals respond to opinion seekers.However, market mavens do not possess a depth of knowledge concerning specific product classes and competing brands.Though they freely give out their knowledge, market mavens tend to disseminate information without necessarily having a desire to persuade consumers to act in a certain way or influence the consumption behavior.Market mavens receive satisfaction out of sharing information, helping others and being consulted (Walsh, Gwinner, & Swanson, 2004).However, because of the credible word-of-mouth recommendations, market mavens do influence others' behavior (Sweeny, Soutar, & Mazzarol, 2008).
Although market mavens have a breadth of knowledge concerning shopping and consumption behaviors, it is opinion leaders that have depth of knowledge of product categories.Opinion leaders are experts for certain products and not others.Their knowledge is sought out by others as they have deep knowledge of the products through prescreening the information, evaluating the products themselves, and are current on the information concerning the products within the marketplace.Opinion leaders are not compensated for their opinions or consumption of particular brands, in contrast to surrogate consumers (Solomon, 1986).

Brand Evangelism
Doss (2014) performed research to understand the phenomenon of brand evangelism and the dimensions involved when consumers transition to a brand evangelist.The study findings resulted in consumer-brand identification, brand salience, brand trust, and opinion leadership as contributing to brand evangelism but brand satisfaction did not have a statistically significant relationship with brand evangelism.However, satisfied consumers are considered to be involved in positive word-of-mouth behavior as suggested by De Matos and Rossi (2008).Kachersky and Lerman (2013) identified satisfaction also as a metric used by marketers to determine the value that products have on a consumer's life.The American Marketing Association (2007) marketing philosophy states that the best way for business to succeed is to deliver value to the consumer through satisfying wants and needs.Satisfaction based on Doss' 2014 study does not have a significant relationship with a consumer becoming a brand evangelism but satisfaction is still important as it leads to marketing success in that consumer's buy products that are satisfying to them (Kachersky & Lerman, 2013;American Marketing Association, 2007).Thus, the generation of marketing value to a company occurs through providing awareness of the value to the consumer.Companies Brand Evangelist Market Maven Opinion Leader would be more successful if the value is not just perceived value but actual true value for the consumer resulting in consumers having a better life because of the product consumed.
A study performed by Becerra and Badrinarayanan (2013) explored brand evangelism and specifically how positive consumer-brand relationships lead to positive consumer-to-consumer communications relating to specific brands.Brand evangelism is described by these researchers as consumers who embrace brands with intensity and actively disseminate their brand experiences with others.During this activity, brand evangelists actually recruit consumers to experience the brand over other brands.The behavior falls under word-of-mouth advertising but with a deep dedication to the brand as brand evangelists will go as far as to entice consumers to switch to their brand even when using a competitor's brand.The study findings suggest that consumer's cognitive and emotional relationships with a particular brand do influence their brand evangelist behaviors.Hutter, Hautz, Dennhardt and Füller (2013) suggests that social media such as a Facebook fanpage support consumer's brand awareness, word-of-mouth involvement and intent to purchase.Social media has revolutionized communication between companies and consumers, and consumers with other consumers.These can be positive or negative communications.Brand related interactions can take place to engage consumers such as through Youtube videos.Social media can provide unlimited opportunities for marketing campaigns.Brands are rather socially defined resulting in social media being an ever present marketing channel to influence consumers to purchase a brand through awareness.This can also help brand evangelists access and easily share helpful information regarding brands as today's marketplace is a highly connected one (Becerra & Badrinarayanan, 2013).

Big Five Factor Model
The five-factor model of personality, known as "the Big Five" consists ofextraversion, openness (to experience), conscientiousness, neuroticism, and agreeableness (Costa & McCrae, 1985;McCrae & John, 1992).Extraversion assesses interpersonal interactions and activity levels of an individual.Examples of adjectives used for individuals scoring high on the extraversion scale consist of active, assertive, energetic, enthusiastic, outgoing, and talkative (McCrae and John 1992).Individuals with a high level of openness have active imaginations, aesthetic sensitivity, intellectual curiosity, wide variety of interests, and variety preferences; adjectives describing openness include artistic, curious, imaginative, insightful, and original (McCrae & John, 1992).Costa and McCrae (1985) suggest conscientious as an individuals' degree of organization, persistence, and motivation in goal-directed behavior with individuals with high scores being the most organized, reliable, and hard working.Adjectives of this concept are efficient, organized, planful, reliable, responsible, and thorough (McCrae & John, 1992).Costa and McCrae (1985) suggest that neuroticism trait consists of individuals that are more likely to have psychological distress, unrealistic ideas, excessive cravings or urges, and maladaptive coping responses in an environment.Adjectives describing neuroticism include anxious, self-pitying, tense, touchy, unstable, and worrying (McCrae & John, 1992).Finally, agreeableness tends to be a trait in an individual's quality of interpersonal orientation ranging from compassion to antagonism in their thoughts, feelings and actions.Adjectives of agreeableness include appreciative, forgiving, generous, kind, sympathetic, and trusting (McCrae & John, 1992).Vazifehdoost, Akbari and Charsted (2012) performed research on the big five factor model as it relates to market mavens.It was found that extraversion, and openness are both positively related to market mavenism while conscientiousness is negatively related to market mavenism.Addtionally, it was found that there are no individual relationships of neuroticism with market mavenism or agreeableness with market mavenism.Gnambs and Batinic (2012) found that there is a positive relationship between extraversion and opinion leadership while there is a negative relationship between neuroticism and opinion leadership.Additionally, it was found that there are no separate relationships between openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness with opinion leadership.
Another study performed by Matzler, Bidmon and Grabner-Krauter (2006) suggests that both hedonic value and personality traits as two drivers of brand affect.Hedonic value was defined as the pleasure potential of a product class in influencing brand affect.Therefore, products with hedonic value are more likely to hold a greater potential for evoking positive emotions in consumers.The two personality traits investigated was extraversion and openness to experience therefore influencing the perceived hedonic value of a product and brand affect.The study findings suggested that extraversion and openness positively related to hedonic product value.Furthermore, the openness personality trait directly and extraversion indirectly through hedonic value influence brand affect which results in attitudinal and purchase loyalty.Taylor-West, Fulford, Reed, Story and Saker (2008) also recommend that a consumer's enthusiasm and overall expertise of the product assist in success especially with more complex products.Lin (2010) conducted a study to explore the relationship of consumer personality trait, brand personality and brand loyalty.The findings suggest a significantly positive relationship between agreeableness and excitement brand personality, sincerity brand personality and competence brand personality.Aaker (1997) defines brand personality as any characteristics that a consumer associates with a particular brand.Therefore, agreeableness and sincerity are the thoughts coming from consumer's warmth and acceptance of a brand.Whereas, extroversion and excitement involve a consumer's social behavior relating specifically to communication, activity and action concepts.Additionally, conscientiousness and competence look at how a consumer views a brand's responsibility, reliability and assurance.Another aspect of Lin's (2010) study suggests that competence and sophistication brand personality and agreeableness and openness personality trait both have a significantly positive influence on affective loyalty.Furthermore, competence, peacefulness and sophistication brand personality and agreeableness and openness personality trait have a significantly positive influence on action loyalty.

Theoretical Framework and Research Hypothesis
This study examines the relationships of the Big 5 Personality Traits to brand evangelism.As indicated in Figure 2

Extraversion and Brand Evangelism
Extraversion assesses interpersonal interactions and activity levelsof an individual (Costa & McCrae, 1985).The higher an individual scores on extraversion, the more the individual is sociable, active, talkative, person-oriented, optimistic and affectionate.Mooradian and Swan (2006) describe extraversion as being venturesome, energetic, and ambitious; these individuals who score high on extraversion are predisposed toward positive affect and interpersonal interaction preference.Specific marketing studies involving extraversion suggest a relationship to positive emotions inconsumption situations (Matzler et al., 2006;Mooradian & Olver, 1997).Furthermore, Vazifehdoost et al. (2012) found that marketing mavenism is positively related to extraversion.Previous research utilizing Volkswagen owners at a brand gathering found that extraversion is positively related to evangelism (Matzler et al., 2007).H1: Brand evangelism will be positively related to extraversion.

Openness and Brand Evangelism
Openness is defined by Costa and McCrae (1992) as having an active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, variety preference, intellectual curiosity, and being independent from judgment.Earlier research by Costa and McCrae (1985) suggests that individual's openness to proactive seeking and appreciation of experience for their own sake and high degree of toleration for and exploration of the unfamiliar is also traits of openness.The most curious, creative, original, imaginative, and untraditional are those with the higher openness scores.Matzler et al. (2006) study suggests that those that score high on the personality trait of openness positively relates to the hedonic value of a product and brand affect.This is due to the higher tendency of these individuals to be curiousabout both inner and outer worlds resulting in experientially richerlives in experiencing negative and positive emotions morekeenly than closed individuals.Finally, Vazifehdoost et al. (2012) found that marketing mavenism is positively related to openness.H2: Brand evangelism will be positively related to openness.Costa and McCrae (1985) suggest conscientious as an individuals' degree of organization, persistence, and motivation in goal-directed behavior with individuals with high scores being the most organized, reliable, and hard working.Vazifehdoost et al. (2012) found that marketing mavenism is negatively related to conscientiousness.Gnambs and Batinic (2012) hypothesized and saw that there is no relationship between conscientiousness and opinion leadership.However, there is no clear connection between individuals who are conscientious and those that are brand evangelists.

Conscientiousness and Brand Evangelism
H3: There is no relationship between brand evangelism and conscientiousness.Costa and McCrae (1985) suggest that neuroticism trait consists of individuals that are more likely to have psychological distress, unrealistic ideas, excessive cravings or urges, and maladaptive coping responses in an environment.Those individuals with the higher scores may be hypochondriacal in nature and are typically worried, nervous and highly emotional.Brand evangelists, however, are secure in their knowledge about their brands and have self-confidence in their convictions (Doss, 2014).Additionally, Gnambs and Batinic (2012) found that there is a negative relationship between neuroticism and opinion leadership.H4: Brand evangelism will be negatively related to neuroticism.

Agreeableness and Brand Evangelism
Agreeableness tends to be a trait in an individual's quality of interpersonal orientation ranging from compassion to antagonism in their thoughts, feelings and actions.Those with higher scorers tend to be more compassionate such as being soft-hearted, good-natured, trusting, helpful, forgiving, gullible, and straightforward (Costa & McCrae, 1985).Another finding from a different study suggests that individuals that score high on agreeableness are typically more trusting than those that score low (Matzler et al., 2006;Mooradian & Swan, 2006).There is no clear connection of agreeableness with brand evangelism, however.As also evidenced by past studies, there is no relationship between agreeableness and opinion leadership (Gnambs & Batinic, 2012) or agreeableness and market mavenism (Vazifehdoost et al., 2012) H5: There is no relationship between brand evangelism and agreeableness.

Methodology and Results
The research method of this study was based on the implementation of self-administered questionnaires.The survey instrument was constructed by one of the researchers of this study and distributed through a data collection agency.In 2009, pre-screened individuals, owners and users of these brands, within a six month period, were chosen on their current consumption of "cult-like" goods or services (Belk & Tumbat, 2005).The brands in the screening included Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Apple's iPhone mobile phones, MINI automobiles, and Saab automobiles, and Starbucks coffee.These products have been referenced within both marketing journals and the practitioner literature as having passionate, loyal consumers who fit into the scope of brand evangelists (Aaker, 1992;Brown, 2004;Fournier, 2001;O'Guinn & Muniz, 2004;Schouten & McAlexander, 1995;Thompson & Arsel, 2004).
A total of 528 surveys were completed.Between 101 and 111 surveys were completed for each of the brands (110 surveys for Harley-Davidson, 103 for iPhone, 101 for MINI, 111 for Saab, and 103 for Starbucks).The overall ages range from 19 to 86 years old with the average age being 48.4 (median age of 49 years).The percentage of males nearly equals the percentage of females at 51% to 49%, respectively.The predominant category for ethnicity is White at 89.4% with the second largest categories being Hispanic/Latino and Asian at 3.4% and 3.2%, respectively.Income levels and education levels are varied with no specific category dominating.
Brand Evangelism.A five-item scale based on Matzler et al. (2007) was used to measure brand evangelism.Sample items included "I have preached to several of my friends about Brand X" and "I feel the need to tell the world that Brand X is the most appealing brand in the world."Response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).The scale's alpha reliability is 0.923.
The Big Five Personality Traits.A version of the Big Five based on John and Srivastava (1999) was used to measure the personality traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.Sample items included "I see myself as someone who is curious about many different things (openness)," "I see myself as someone who perseveres until the task is finished (conscientiousness)," "I see myself as someone who is outgoing, sociable (extraversion)," "I see myself as someone who likes to cooperate with others (agreeableness)," and "I see myself as someone who gets nervous easily (neuroticism)."Response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).The alpha reliabilities for the five personality traits are 0.848 for openness, 0.868 for conscientiousness, 0.813 for extraversion, 0.807 for agreeableness, and 0.846 for neuroticism.
Descriptive characteristics, Cronbach's alphas, and correlations are listed in Table 1.All Cronbach's alphas are well above the norm of 0.70 for reliabilities.Additionally, factor loadings for each scale were examined.Average variance extracted all exceeded the minimum threshold of 0.50 for each scale to support convergent validity (Hair et al. 2006 A multivariate regression model was fit for testing the hypotheses.As seen in Figure 1, the dependent variable is brand evangelism and the independent variables are extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and agreeableness.The results of the overall regression model show significance (F = 9.771, p< 0.001).Individual results for hypotheses testing are in Table 2. Brand evangelism is significantly related to extraversion (β = 0.155, p< 0.01), openness (β = 0.172, p< 0.01), and neuroticism (β = 0.107, p< 0.05), thus supporting H1 and H2.However, it was hypothesized that neuroticism would be negatively related to brand evangelism and the analysis show a positive relationship.Additionally, H3 and H5 are supported as neither conscientiousness (β = 0.020, p> 0.10) nor agreeableness (β = 0.006, p> 0.10) are significantly related to brand evangelism.

Conclusion
This study suggests that brand evangelism is significantly related to extraversion, openness, and neuroticism.Extraversion relates to higher scores on individuals being sociable, active, talkative, person-oriented, optimistic and affectionate individual and being predisposed toward interpersonal interaction preference (Costa & McCrae, 1985;Mooradian & Swan, 2006).Openness relates tointellectual curiosity, active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, variety preference, desire to explore the unfamiliar, creative, original, imaginative, and untraditional (Costa & McCrae, 1992;Costa & McCrae, 1985).Neuroticism relates toindividuals that are more likely to have psychological distress, unrealistic ideas, excessive cravings or urges, and maladaptive coping responses in an environment with higher scorers being hypochondriacal in nature (Costa & McCrae, 1985).
Further research should attempt to uncover the differences studies have shown concerning neuroticism.Here, neuroticism is positively related to brand evangelism, but Gnambs and Batinic (2012) found a negative relationship with opinion leadership while Vasifehdoos et al. ( 2012) found neuroticism has no relationship with market mavenism.
Companies are in constant flux on how to best promote their brands.Reaching the corresponding brand evangelists is a good way for brand managers to have information flow from the company to a certain type of consumer.The brand evangelists are in "the field" with potential consumers and can carry on a type of guerilla marketing on behalf of the brand.Understanding how to engage these evangelists is vital in building, fostering, and cementing relationships.Knowing that brand evangelists have the personality traits of extraversion, openness, and neuroticism is a good beginning of how best to approach evangelists.
There are six future research areas that have been identified by the researchers.First, the exploration of social media use among brand evangelists could be studied to see how it influences consumers' perceptions of brands.
Second, the area of generic brands is underrepresented in the literature in terms of whether brand evangelists exist for the "generic" versus "popular" brand.Martín and Cerviño (2011) suggest that marketers benefit through promoting a clear association between brands and countries that have positive images.Therefore, the fourth future research area of interest is to conduct research to gather information on whether brands made in other countries where a person strongly relates to that country create a brand evangelist.The fifth area is to research if the ability to customize products within a brand such as product color options and the ability to add names on productsfoster the creation of brand evangelists.This research would explore whether customization features help with creating emotional links and expression of a consumer's self-concept.The sixth area is to look at brands with unique product packaging to see if that fosters the creation of a brand evangelist.Uncovering insight into brand evangelism will drive future successes for companies.It is crucial that companies understand how a consumer evolves to become a brand evangelist and in understanding the values, beliefs, and needs of society if they are to create brands that are culturally relevant and can stand the test of time (Bevolo and Brand 2003).
, the following hypotheses are visualized in the proposed theoretical framework.The foundations of this study are based on the previous works of Vazifehdoos et al. (2012) and Gnambs and Batinic (2012) that studied relationships of the Big 5 and market mavenism and the Big 5 and opinion leadership, respectively.

Figure
Figure 2. Theoretical model

Table 2 .
Regression results