Abstract

Brand personality can facilitate the development of meaningful consumer-brand relationships and allow consumers to move beyond a product attribute focus. The pharmaceutical industry has faced challenging market dynamics in recent years, and the outlook for branded prescription drugs remains bleak. In light of the difficulties facing this industry, brand personality may be a valuable marketing asset. A study of 483 U.S. respondents explored the existence of prescription drug brand personalities as identified by consumers. The findings revealed that consumers are in fact able to attribute human personality traits to prescription drugs, and a stable and generalizable two-dimensional (Competence & Innovativeness) scale was established. The results of a multiple regression analysis suggested that brand personality can be created through a number of different ways, including brand familiarity, advertisement, and personal experience (usage). In addition, a significant relationship between brand personality and likelihood to request a prescription was found, providing preliminary support for the hypothesis that brand personality can influence consumer purchase behaviour. This research has important implications for the expansion of pharmaceutical branding strategies and demonstrates the potential of using brand personality as an effective positioning and differentiation tool.