A Study on Brand Personality Factors as Recognized by the Customers of Contract Foodservice Management Companies

Kim, Ok Sun; Chun, Hui Jung

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the attributes and factors of brand personality for contract foodservice management companies. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to five students at universities operating under the top five companies in contract foodservice management. The following statistical analyses were conducted for the data assessment: descriptive analysis, t-test, ANOVA, reliability analysis, and factor analysis, using the SPSS Win(12.0) package program. From these analyses we divided a company's brand personality into the following five functional and emotional elements: sensibility, sincerity, confidence, competence, and excitement. Based on these five elements a total of 26 scales were developed to measure brand attributes of the companies. The variance was explained by 19.29% of sensibility, 17.65% of sincerity, 15.71% of confidence, 14.06% of competence, and 13.62% of excitement. The calculated Cronbach's alpha was more than .90 for all the scales measuring the five attributes, indicating good internal consistency. There were significant differences in sensibility(p<.01), sincerity(p<.001), creditability(p<.01), competence (p<.001), and excitement(p<.001) among the companies. In regards to overall brand personality, company a had a higher mean score for sincerity, while the other companies had higher mean scores for competence. Among the brand personalities, 'confidence' had the highest mean score with 3.36, followed by 'cooperation' (3.17), 'successful'(3.12), 'leadership'(3.11), and 'down-to-earth'(3.02).