Empirical Study on Influence of Store Brand Personality on Consumer Choice of Store across Organized Retail Formats in Pune

The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of "brand personality" of an organized retail format on "consumer choice" in selection of a store. Five personality dimensions: Sincerity (store moral values), Excitement (in store promotions to create excitement). Competence (competence of service personnel in the store). Sophistication (presentation of merchandize), and Ruggedness (ruggedness of products within the store) given by Aaker  (1997) have been selected to test the assumption. Secondary data was collected through research reports and research papers related to brand personality and retailing. Primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire. The stores surveyed were selected on the basis of characteristics of the retail format (one hypermarket, one specialty store and one departmental store). Three stores of different formats were selected to examine the variation in impact of brand personality on consumer choice across the three different formats. Sample size of 120 respondents (40 from each format) was taken through a structured questionnaire. The respondents were selected through simple random sampling. Simple regression analysis and ANOVA were administered to test the hypotheses. The results revealed that "brand personality" had a significant impact on the "consumer choice" of store. The research will enable the organized retailers to focus on enhancing those brand personality dimensions which consumers perceive as important for store selection. Enhancing "brand personality" will lead to enhanced market image thereby generating more consumer traffic within the stores leading to increased sales and profits.