Do consumers of FMCGs seek brands with congruent personalities?

Abstract

Brand personality is an important source of differentiation for companies. Congruency theory suggests a link between human personality traits and the personalities of brands. This article revisits this link among less visibility brands. Specifically, it looks at pasta as a product category focusing on Barilla - a leading FMCG pasta brand in the Italian domestic market, and sets out to determine the extent to which consumers are choosing Barilla, as a result of congruency to their own personality traits. Two of five dimensions in each of brand and human personality support the congruency link. It is interesting that the dimensions exhibiting significance received the highest scores by respondents that exhibited the highest usage. Furthermore, these two dimensions of personality are the same associations highlighted over recent years in Barilla communication campaigns. The results of the research are useful for FMCG brand managers. In their quest to seek differentiation, brand managers may successfully associate human characteristics to their brands. Although there are currently no established instruments that can directly measure the congruency, the research provides a methodology that successfully investigates congruency between a pasta brand and human personality. Caution needs to be exercised in extending the findings to other product categories.