Positioning in Market Space: The Evaluation of Swedish Universities' Online Brand Personalities

ABSTRACT

The paper extends Aaker's previous empirical work on brand personality by exploring whether Swedish Universities communicate distinctive brand personalities in cyberspace. Employing a multistage methodology, data are drawn from the English Web sites of 17 Swedish universities and analyzed by using a combination of computerized content and correspondence analyses. Results indicate that some universities appear to have clear brand personalities, others take on a new face with regard to the obvious personality one would have initially associated them with, while others fail to communicate their brand personalities in any distinct manner. While illustrating a powerful but simple and relatively inexpensive way for institutions for higher education and brand researchers to study communicated brand personalities, this study also highlights the growing importance of brand positioning issues in internationalization and globalization of higher educational institutions.

KEWORDS:

• Branding
• brand personality
• international education
• university
• Sweden

Notes

1. http://english.hsv.se

2. http://www.britannica.com

3. A commonly used threshold value for acceptable reliability is 70 percent (Hair et al., 1998). Although 90 percent is an absolute standard (See Chin, 1998), values below 70 percent have been deemed acceptable if the research is exploratory in nature.

Swedish Government Offices. (2005). New world–new university: A summary of Government Bill 2004/05:162. Ministry of Education Research & Culture, Article No. U05.033