Investigating of the perceptions of sneakers consumers towards brand personality

The objective of this study is the analysis of the perceptions sport shoes consumers maintain regarding brand personality and the determination of the attitudes of sneakers consumers have as regards the concept of the brand following the evaluation of the data obtained from the analyses. The data of this research was gathered using the Brand Personality Scale developed by Aaker (1997), which consists of 4 dimensions and 39 items and was adapted to Turkish by Aksoy and Özsomer (2007). The research population comprised students from the Faculties of Sports Sciences in Turkey's Aegean region, and the research sample included 387 individuals who are students in Sports Sciences Faculties of Ege University, Manisa Celal Bayar University, Dokuz Eylül University, Pamukkale University and Adnan Menderes University Phisical Education And High School, Cronbach Alpha coefficient of the scale was .96, total item correlations ranged between .49 and .74, and factor loading changed between 55 and 75. Descriptive statistics, percentile analyses, discrimination tests and correlation tests were used in the analysis of the data. In the result of this research, it found that the Brand Personality Scale is a valid and reliable scale in order to measure brand personality of sneakers. The most important element of brand personality is competence (quality, professional, profesyonel, succesful, skillfully, confidential, prestigious, self confident, assertive, familiar, steady, global, consistent, good, original), for sneakers consumers. The result of the research showed consumers to consider comfort to be the most important factor (35,8%) in using sport shoes, and that they purchase their sports shoes mainly from sports shops (56,6%); that those who purchase more than they need to do so because they appreciate the product (51,7%); and that the sneakers were most often used both for sports and for daily wear (82%). No difference was observed between brand personality and its sub-dimensions in terms of gender, brand, and the rate of purchase. No relationship was observed between brand personality dimensions in terms of age. A significant relationship was observed between the number of sneakers owned and competency, which is a sub-dimension of brand personality. The sub-dimension of competency and excitement were found to be higher among those who pay higher prices for sneakers. Keywords: Consumer, Brand Personality, Sport, Sneakers