Communicating online brand personality : intention, implementation and internal perception

Expressing a brand’s personality is shown to be an important way of communicating information about a brand that words alone cannot do. Companies today conduct much of their communication with customers via their company website. The study of the service sector is identified as an area of interest since there is a worldwide shift from manufacturing to industries requiring service organizations. As services are intangible, it is necessary for companies to make their offering more concrete. One way of doing this is by expressing the brand’s personality. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that employees understand and can communicate the brand to customers. Data from four cases were used to evaluate how companies intend and implement their company’s online brand personality. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data. Once the companies’ intention and implementation were established in this study, internal perception was examined to find if the intended messages were understood by staff members. The results indicate that in order to provide a high internal understanding of the brand, it would require that the brand is clearly defined by the people in charge of implementing it. By having ongoing communication about the brand through both formal and informal channels it gives employees more insight about the brand’s personality. Additionally, hiring employees who share similar personality traits with the ones that the company’s brand wishes to portray will enhance their brand communication efforts.Validerat; 20101217 (root