Brand Personality Perceptions of a Japanese Automobile Giant

This paper reports on Generation Y students’ brand personality perceptions of the Toyota motor car brand. Motor cars are highly conspicuous consumption items that imbue a significant amount of symbolic meaning. Brand personality has been identified as one of the pivotal components of the symbolic attributes assigned to a brand and something that has proved as a useful tool for differentiating a brand from its competitors. The purpose of this study was to determine the Generation Y university students’ brand personality perceptions of the Toyota motor car brand. For the study, a sample of 356 Generation Y students aged between 18 and 24 years, registered at the campuses of two South African public higher education institutions was taken. A self-reporting questionnaire consisting of 66 brand personality traits of symbolic products, anchored on a five-point Likert-type scale was used to collect the required data. The gathered data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results suggest that in South Africa, Generation Y students perceive the Toyota motor car brand to be “responsible”, “outdoorsy” and “tough”. These findings suggest that this cohort perceives the Toyota motor car brand as being distinctly masculine and reliable.