Preference for a career in retailing: a question of personality

Abstract

Drawing on previous findings from the field of brand personality research and employer branding, this paper aims to explore the symbolic attributes of the retail industry image in South Africa and to identify those personality traits that distinguish preferred industries from the retail industry. The research provides a contemporary overview of the current image of the retail industry in South Africa from the perspective of young university students and allows retailers to strengthen their joint communication effort accordingly. Therefore, a quantitative survey study with 1426 participants from five South African universities was conducted. Participants assessed personality characteristics of the retail industry as well as their most preferred industry. The main results suggest that retail and non-retail students hold different personality perceptions of the retail industry and that prior retail involvement accounts for this difference to some extent. Moreover, the analysis shows that retailing performs significantly worse on those personality attributes that are of major importance for future job seekers. Additionally, the study identifies those attributes that exert a strong effect on students’ preferences for the retail industry. The findings provide useful communication themes for educational institutions, retail companies, and industry associations in order to foster positive personality perceptions associated with the retail industry.

Keywords:

• Brand personality
• industry image
• retail industry
• career
• South Africa

Acknowledgment

We would like to acknowledge the support and assistance in data collection of the five participating universities, namely Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Durban University of Technology, Tshwane University of Technology, University of Johannesburg and Vaal University of Technology.

Notes

1. We checked for multicollinearity, since all personality traits were included in the logistic regression model. Checking the collinearity statistics of the corresponding linear regression, SPSS shows that no personality trait holds a perfect linear relationship with another predictor (VIFs between 1.496 and 2.528; Tolerance all above .395; all correlation coefficients below .63). Accordingly, we expect the results of the logistic regression to be virtually unbiased.

2. Odds ratios have been calculated as Exp(1)-1.