Public Relations Review 37 (2011) 12–19 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Public Relations Review Generic charisma – Conceptualization and measurement Ana Tkalac Verˇ ciˇ c a,* , Dejan Verˇ ciˇ c b,1 a Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, Trg J. F. Kennedy 6, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia b Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Pristop d.o.o., Trubarjeva c. 79, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia article info Article history: Received 1 August 2010 Received in revised form 19 October 2010 Accepted 9 December 2010 Keywords: Charisma Human brand Exploratory factor analysis Questionnaire development abstract In these times, when fame is available to almost anyone, it is worth being able to measure the extent and dimensions of a person’s charisma. Most of the research on charisma to date is restricted to the area of leadership. In this article, however, charisma is generalized to take in all human beings and is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional cognitive-affective phenomenon. The article presents a pilot study aimed at providing an adequate opera- tional definition of the construct as well as an initial tool for its measurement. A following literature review shows how authors have developed the concept of charisma and its initial operational dimensions for empirical research. A questionnaire is developed in three stages. The factor analyses applied in stages two and three point towards a six-factor solution (i.e. six dimensions of charisma). Further analysis reveals that the developed instrument is reliable and viable as well as applicable for future theoretical and practical work. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Personalization characterizes the present era. Politicians have become personalized (Grbeˇ sa, 2008; Stanyer, 2007) at the expense of party bureaucracies and political programs; business is personalized in its leaders defining and sustaining corporate brands (Fombrun & Van Riel, 2004; Ind, 1997) and CEOs directly contribute about half of a company’s reputation and/or market valuation (Gaines-Ross, 2003), while social life is preoccupied with celebrities that need not be perceived competent in anything but in their ability to attract attention (Thomson, 2006). Humans are marketable entities and therefore capable of becoming brands. Human brands are marketing entities that are similar, yet different from line (product or service) and corporate brands (Hatch & Schultz, 2008). They are similar in clustering functional and emotional values promising a particular experience (de Chernatony & Segal-Horn, 2003), yet different in that the brand entity is a human person. Human brands have been described in the context of celebrity-making, referring to “any well-known persona who is the subject of marketing communications effort” (Thomson, 2006, p. 104). Yet, by agreeing with that “people can be manufactured into marketable products” (Rein, Kotler, & Stoller, 1997, p. 57), limiting the notion of a human brand only to celebrities, is too restrictive. Relations between humans and their brands parallel relations between products, services and corporations and their brands. Any entity has a potential for becoming a brand and that also holds true for humans. Charisma has been proposed as the core component of a celebrity (Rein et al., 1997). While originally in Ancient Greece denoting a divine gift, exceptionality, in modernity engineering charisma is seen as a normal part of marketing (Rein et al., 1997) or public relations (Bromley, 1993) efforts. So far as charisma is expressed in behavior, to that extent it is also * Corresponding author. Tel.: +385 1 238 33 22. E-mail addresses: atkalac@efzg.hr (A.T. Verˇ ciˇ c), Dejan.Vercic@Pristop.si (D. Verˇ ciˇ c). 1 Tel.: +386 1 23 91 444. 0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2010.12.002