The interplay between SME owner-managers and the brand-as-a-person
| Pages | 555-572 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-10-2017-1645 |
| Date | 15 July 2019 |
| Published date | 15 July 2019 |
| Author | Edgar Centeno,Jesus Cambra-Fierro,Rosario Vazquez-Carrasco,Susan J. Hart,Keith Dinnie |
| Subject Matter | Marketing |
The interplay between SME owner-managers
and the brand-as-a-person
Edgar Centeno
EGADE Business School, Tecnol
ogico de Monterrey, Mexico, Mexico
Jesus Cambra-Fierro and Rosario Vazquez-Carrasco
Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain
Susan J. Hart
Business School, Durham University, Durham, UK, and
Keith Dinnie
College of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate the largely unexplored conceptualisation of the brand-as-a-person metaphor in small-to-
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by examining its potential relation with the SME owner-manager, the pathways to its creation and development
and the intuitive nature of this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach –A grounded theory approach was used, and data were collected through a set of 36 semi-structured interviews
with 30 SME owner-managers in various sectors in Mexico.
Findings –The results indicate that SME owner-managers intuitively humanise their brands. The study revealed four pathways to develop the
brand-as-a-person metaphor in the SME context: through personality traits, tastes and preferences, abilities and knowledge and values, all
suggesting that SMEs’brand-as-a-person metaphors are largely an extension of their owner-managers.
Research limitations/implications –The paper presents a theoretical framework that illustrates the four pathways to the creation and
development of brand-as-a-person that are derived from the brand’s relationship with the SME owner-manager. The results of cross-industry semi-
structured interviews are limited to a single culture context.
Practical implications –SME owner-managers should first undertake an introspective personal assessment of their intuitive and conscious
decision-making, as SME owner-managers often make decisions in an intuitive way. The results suggest that they shoul d act in a more conscious,
responsible and rational way when formulating their brand strategies.
Originality/value –This is the first study to clarify the profound influence of SME owner-managers’personal characteristics, including personality
traits, tastes and preferences, abilities and knowledge and values, on the brand-as-a-person metaphor. This study also confirms the intuitive
learning strategy formulation of SME owner-managers’branding practices and SMEs’need for a more rational approach to branding.
Keywords SMEs, Brand personality
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Brands are a valuable asset for small and large organisations, as
they produce a bundle of benefits which enhance the relationship
among the firm, its owners, its customers and other stakeholders
(de Chernatony and McDonald, 2003;Kapferer, 2004;Keller,
2001). When seeking to position a brand successfully, brand
managers connect their brands with consumers through
intangible aspects of the brand, such as the brand personality, as a
basis for creating affinity. This aspect of brands is part of the
brand-as-a-person metaphor, which includes its personality,
demographics and behaviour (Machado et al.,2019). Prior
studies have shown that consumers connect with brands whose
personalities are similar to theirs (Freling et al.,2011;Huang
et al.,2012;Radler, 2018).
A large part of the literature on brand personality seeks to
determine how to improve the brand’s relationship with
customers (Banerjee,2016;Kervyn et al., 2012;Radler, 2018).
However, there is little knowledge of, or research into, the
extent to which brand managers have a similar connectionwith
the brands they manage. This study seeks to describe the
connection between brands and brand managers, as key
decision makers, at the time when the brand is being created
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
28/4 (2019) 555–572
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-10-2017-1645]
Declaration of conflicting interests: The author(s) declare no potential
conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or
publication of this article.
Received 31 October 2017
Revised 21 July 2018
23 January 2019
14 February 2019
Accepted 15 February 2019
555
and developed –that is, when the brandbelongs to a small-to-
medium-sized enterprise(SME), and the owner-manager has a
major role in formulating the brand’s personalityof the brand,
among other intangible elements of the brand. Therefore, this
paper seeks to identify the pathways that may structure the
connection between the SME owner-manager and the brand-
as-a-personand to revealthe nature of this connection.
In contrast to the analytical focus of a majority of research
studies on brand-as-a-person, this study focuses on the
management’s (cf. the consumer’s) perspective, thus addressing
calls for additional theoretical underpinnings of this metaphor
(Davies et al.,2018). This approach offers three key benefits: it
helps to explain the nature of a humanising strategy that stems
from the SME owner-manager’s personal characteristics and
narrative; as the brand-as-a-person is created and developed
during the initial stages of the business, it helps to clarify the
brand’s origins and heritage as it becomes part of a larger
organisation; and it helps owner-managers ensure that the brand-
as-a-person remains true to its core values and rela tionship to the
SME owner-manager who created and developed it.
SME branding is at an early stage of research development.
Many studies have explained the importance of brand
orientation and brand identity (Hirvonen and Laukkanen,
2014;Muhonen et al., 2017), but little is known about the
effect of the SME owner-manager’s transitional and powerful
guidance (Spence and Essoussi, 2010). As they play an
important role in many brand decisions, an owner-manager
builds his or her brand using personal intuition, passion,
knowledge, expertise and personality (Dion and Arnould,
2016;Kienzler, 2017). Prior studies have suggested that SME
brands become an extension of their first owners’
characteristics (Mitchell et al.,2015;Renton et al., 2016;
Spence and Essoussi, 2010). One study in particular makes
reference that the brand becomes the personification of the
SME owner-manager (Krake, 2005). To illustrate this
connection, Kate Spade began designing her own handbags
with a jaunty style that are considered an iconic emblem of
fashion, as was Kate herself (Hanbury, 2018). SMEs’strategy
formulation improveswhen SME owner-managers explore and
make decisions using high levelsof introspection, intuition and
consciousness. If strategyis intuitively formulated, it is possible
to infer that brand-as-a-person is not formulated intentionally
but is consciously learned, just as many other management
skills are developed (Centeno et al.,2013;Mintzberg and
Waters, 1985). Unfortunately, academic research on SME
brands has neglected to understand the relationship between
SME owner-managers and the brand-as-a-person metaphor
including brandpersonality.
The entrepreneurship literature has sought to understand the
entrepreneurs’personalities and their effect on their businesses
(Holland and Garrett, 2015;Viinikainen et al.,2017;Yitshaki
and Kropp, 2016). Many authors have argued that researchers
should look to entrepreneurs’values and cognition as primary
psychological characteristics and as signals by which to
understand how they manage their businesses and formulate
their vision and strategies (Tomczyk et al.,2013). The literature
has suggested that the entrepreneur’s personal characteristics
affect his or her business, so while the entrepreneurship literature
has focused on learning about the effect of the entrepreneur’s
personality and other personal characteristics on his or her
business, the branding literature has focused on determining how
the brand’s personality and the customers’personality connect
and how that connection can be improved. To the best of the
researchers’knowledge, no study has yet analysed how the SME
owner-manager’s personality influences his or her brand’s
personality.
This study makes two primary contributions,one theoretical
and one managerial. From the perspective of theory, this study
provides empirical evidence of the various pathways to the
SME owner-manager’s development of the brand-as-a-person
metaphor. No other study captures the intuition of the SME
owner-managerin creating and developing a brand-as-a-person
that is close to her or his personal characteristics and that go
beyond a distorted image of her/himself. Instead, as prior
entrepreneurial literature has suggested, many activities of the
entrepreneur are representations of herself or himself, as their
activities including branding usually mirror their roles as
owner-managers. This paper also offers a managerial roadmap
for the development of brand-as-a-personto help SME owner-
managers develop a less intuitive and more conscious strategy
that matches their personal characteristics and those of their
consumers. The SME owner-manager is then required to seek
congruency between consumers and the brand and between
herself or himselfand the brand.
As the objective of this study is to analysebrand-as-a-person
metaphor from the owner-manager’s perspective, Section 2
presents an overview of the literature on brand-as-a-person
metaphor, followed by a research focus in Section 3 on the
brand strategies used in SMEs and entrepreneurs’key traits.
Then Section 4 explains the grounded theory approach used in
this research. Next, the findings are presented in Section 5,
along with analyses of the relationship between SME owner-
managers and their brand-as-a-person. Theoretical and
practical discussions follow in Sections 6 and 7, and the paper
concludes with the study’s limitations and suggestions for
future researchin Section 8.
2. Brand-as-a-person: definition, purpose and
dimensions
Animism (Flight and Coker, 2016;Guthrie, 1993;Nida and
Smalley, 1959) and anthropomorphism (Epley et al.,2007;
Tuškej and Podnar, 2018;Waytz et al., 2010a)arethetheoretical
building blocks with which to study the brand-as-a-person
metaphor (Aaker, 1997;Fournier, 1998;Davies and Chun,
2003;Gardner and Levy, 1955;Hanby, 1999;King, 1973).
Animism, which is defined as “attributing life to the non-living”
(Guthrie, 1993,p.52),hasalsobeenreferredtoasthebeliefthat
objects acquire souls in the sense that they have a core essence
similartoanancestryorgenealogy(Aggarwal, 2004).
Anthropomorphism is defined as “attributing human characteristics
to nonhuman things or events”(Guthrie, 1993,p.52).Social
psychology provides extended research on how humans
anthropomorphise inanimate objects and non-human actors like
supernatural beings (Epley et al.,2008;Niemyjska and Drat-
Ruszczak, 2013), computers (Gong, 2008;Waytz et al., 2010b)
and pets (Chartrand et al.,2008;Epley et al.,2008). With the
expanded presence of brands in consumers’lives, interest has
increased in how animism and anthropomorphism can improve
consumer–brand interactions and relationships between the
SME owner-managers and the brand-as-a-person
Edgar Centeno et al.
Journal of Product & Brand Management
Volume 28 · Number 4 · 2019 · 555–572
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